How quarantine spurred Russia to import substitution in shipbuilding
Quarantine has become another reason for responsible officials in Russia to become concerned about real import substitution in shipbuilding. Moreover, we are talking about civil courts. The problem is not related to Western sanctions - simply because of closed borders, foreign specialists often cannot come to the Russian Federation to carry out commissioning of imported equipment, and this disrupts the schedule for updating the fishing fleet.
The participants of the round table in the Federation Council spoke about this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The problem of foreign specialists arriving in Russia to carry out commissioning work. We are working very actively with the FSB and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to open our border, but the problem is that foreign specialists are not released from that side,” said Boris Kabakov, director of the department of shipbuilding industry and marine equipment of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation.
General Director of the United Shipbuilding Corporation Alexey Rakhmanov noted that Russia has recently been building “a drop in the bucket” on its own compared to orders for seiners in Turkey, Singapore, Korea or China. “52 ships in the total fleet that is retiring and requiring replacement is a drop in the ocean,” Rakhmanov said.
Senator Konstantin Dolgov noted that even ships built at Russian shipyards use a significant portion of imported components.
In Russia today, only 40-45% of domestic components for fishing vessels are produced, Deputy Head of Rosrybolovstvo Petr Savchuk emphasized: “Even those vessels that are being built in Blagoveshchensk today use Chinese engines and so on,” he said.
The head of USC Rakhmanov described what is included in 40% of localization - the filling of Russian equipment is just over 10%, and the remaining 30% is the construction of seiner hulls.
“We were not involved in the small-sized fleet - it was not our size, but in the near future one Rybinsk enterprise will become part of the corporation, and then we will begin serious work on the market for vessels up to 20 meters, and we will be happy to offer a solution. Moreover, we already have developments in engines with a power of up to 300 horsepower for small vessels. Just from Russian manufacturers, they are approximately two times cheaper than Chinese ones,” Rakhmanov announced.
Representative of the Ministry of Industry Kabakov said that in Russia there is a successful example - at the Crimean shipbuilding plant "More" localization reaches up to 90%.
“The More plant plans to order ten medium-tonnage seiner trawlers for the Azov-Black Sea basin. We have set a condition of 30% subsidizing the cost of small and medium-tonnage vessels so that the vessel is sufficiently localized. Here, we are creating such a project within the framework of the state program “Development of Shipbuilding” together with the customer - this is the Black Sea Fishing Company. The localization process there is approaching 90%,” the official said.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.