The head of Rostec recalled that the state corporation today provides 80% of the army's needs for weapons that are involved in the special operation
MOSCOW, May 17th. /tass/. The head of Rostec, Sergey Chemezov, said that he would like to meet with the new Minister of Defense, Andrei Belousov, and discuss the possibility of retaining the saved funds for enterprises of the military-industrial complex (MIC) to direct to the creation of new equipment.
"But many directors of defense enterprises are simply not interested [in] improving productivity. Because if he achieves a reduction in the cost of manufacturing a particular product, starting next year the Ministry of Defense will set him the price he has achieved. That is, if he does everything to save money, and directs the saved funds to some of his needs, he will be told: "No, I'm taking it all away." Therefore, we want to meet with the new Minister [of Defense] and talk about how, after all, not to calculate the cost of contracts from the achieved cost, but for some period to give the opportunity to save the funds that the company has saved. And these funds should be directed to the development of production, to the creation of new, modern technology," Chemezov said in an interview with RBC.
Chemezov also noted, answering a question about the similarity of the current situation with the mid-1980s, which was voiced in the Kremlin's comment on the nomination of Belousov, that "in principle, we also need oil and guns."
He said that for him, on the one hand, the nomination of Belousov was unexpected, but on the other hand, Chemezov called this decision the right one. "Today we need a person who would consider the defense industry not just as a source of obtaining weapons, but also as a fairly large sphere of the economy, which provides an opportunity for the development of civilian products. Before the start of its development, the share of civilian products in revenue was almost 44.5%. Due to the fact that our state defense order has increased significantly, its share has decreased to 35%, but in absolute numbers it has grown anyway and today it amounts to almost a trillion rubles. A big number," Chemezov added.
According to him, "the Minister of Defense should consider the defense industry from all sides: both from the point of view of providing the army, and from the point of view of producing modern high-tech civilian products." "Andrei Ramovich [Belousov] and I have known each other for many years, even when he was an assistant to the president and when he worked at the Ministry of Economic Development, and for several years now he has worked as first deputy Prime Minister. We crossed paths on various issues," said the head of Rostec.
Profitability of production
Chemezov recalled that Rostec today provides 80% of the army's needs for weapons that are involved in its military. "The task of the Ministry of Defense is to obtain high-quality and effective weapons, the economy for the military is the tenth thing. Of course, we have accumulated a huge number of problems in this direction. The profitability of our production today is only 2.28%," he said, specifying that the profitability should be "at least 5%, and in general - from 5% to 10%." It is difficult to develop with the current profitability indicator, he believes, since enterprises create new modern equipment only if the Ministry of Defense allocates direct financing for R&D or R&D. Without this, many enterprises are in a state "just to survive," Chemezov said.
