No support to shipyards in fight with Defense Ministry
The President’s Aide to the Northwestern District Nikolay Vinnichenko accuses the leadership of the United Shipbuilding Corporation for taking a “deconstructive” position in the conflict with the Defense Ministry over prices for construction of submarines.
As BarentsObserver reported, the shipbuilding industry refused to accept the ministry’s budget conditions because of the major costs and unpredictability linked with the construction of submarines.
The budget offered by the ministry is “tens of billions of rubles” lower than the demand of the United Shipbuilding Corporation.
According to Head of the Arkhangelsk shipbuilders’ union Aleksander Savkin, workers at the three major shipyards in Arkhangelsk belonging to the United Shipbuilding Corporation – Sevmash, Zvezdochka and Arktika – risk delays and reduction in payments because of the unclosed defense contracts, Kommersant reports.
Vinnichenko, on the other side, puts all the blame on the leadership of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC): - The main reason for the Ministry of Defense’s refusal to sign the contracts with USC is the deconstructive position of the corporation’s leadership, who still aren’t able to understand the price policy of the contract or justify their claims to the Ministry of Defense.
Vinnichenko also accuses USC for trying to conceal “old sins” and cover up for earlier financial problems by getting as much money as possible from the federal budget.
The ministry had to cash out 50 billion RUB for the first Graney-class (Yasen) attack submarine, the “Severodvinsk” and the second vessel of the class, the “Kazan”, will become far more expensive, as much as 110 billion RUB. Russia wants a total of up to ten Graney-class subs to be build by 2020. That will alone account for five percent of the total defense budget in the period.
