Sanctions benefited Russian mechanical engineering
The sanctions imposed by the West against Russia in 2014 pushed the Russian government to the need to develop its own economy.
This opinion is expressed by the chairman of the Rosspetsmash association, Konstantin Babkin, who is quoted by Komsomolskaya Pravda.
“We have been striving for many years to WTO, they wanted to please the West and integrate into the world economy, and for this they fulfilled all the conditions that were put forward to us and opened their market. And finally, the emergence of sanctions and anti-sanctions pushed our government to stop working for someone else’s economy and begin to develop its own. This improved the way of thinking of our officials; they began to support agriculture, mechanical engineering, and equipment for the food industry. We felt it. Therefore, sanctions turned out to be a good thing for us,” Babkin believes.
The publication notes that over the past five years, the production of Russian agricultural machinery has tripled, and its market share has increased from 26% to 56%. In addition, road construction production increased by 40%, and the average salary in mechanical engineering rose by 15%. The number of employees has also increased: if previously 100 thousand people worked in agricultural engineering, now there are 130 thousand.
According to Babkin, for any enterprise that wants to produce something in Russia, the state must provide conditions for competition no worse than those of its Western colleagues: cheap loans, low taxes, easy bureaucracy, government subsidies.
“So far this has not always worked out,” admits the chairman of the Rosspetsmash association. – They increased excise taxes on gasoline and all energy resources became more expensive, increased VAT, land taxes. The key rate has remained at an exorbitant level for many years. And the cost of loans is a very important thing for the development of production. Therefore, if not for sanctions, our manufacturer would not have been able to compete with Western ones.”
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