Penal company OPK
The results of the legislative process in the military-industrial complex in 2017 year suggest: the order established in the management of the defense industry is inadequate to the external threats facing Russia. While the developed countries have accelerated the transition to the sixth technological order and began the production of new types of weapons, the development of our "defense" is hampered by vague and contradictory methods of leadership.
According to experts of the Analytical Board of the Federation Council, the imperfection of the law was one of the reasons that many enterprises are experiencing difficulties with the introduction of innovations. R & D expenditures amount to 0,6 percent of GDP, while in developed countries this figure is two to three percent. The rate of renewal of domestic fixed assets is no more than one percent per year, if necessary at least six to ten percent. In such a legal field, there is no need to talk about a large-scale transition to a new technological order, and it is no longer possible to rely on the groundwork left over from past times.
All evil - in the fight against corruption
It is worth pondering over the words of the former Prime Minister of the USSR, Senator Nikolai Ryzhkov. At one of the meetings of the Council of the Federation, he said that if financiers are responsible for implementing a state program, the state will save a lot of money, but the result will be zero or bad. If industry representatives take up the business, the program will be implemented, but it will be very expensive. “Economists and industrialists should work together on the implementation of state projects,” Nikolai Ryzhkov shares his rich management experience.
What is happening with us? De-jure parity in the normative management of the defense sector between financiers and industrialists is observed. Responsible for rule-making are mainly the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Finance and the FAS. But first, the work of these departments often resembles the actions of a swan, a crab and a pike in a famous fable. Secondly, FAS dominates among law-making centers. After the abolition of Goskomtsen, this department is primarily responsible for pricing, in fact, includes all types of state regulation. Judging by the latest meetings in the Federal Assembly, representatives of the FAS are satisfied with the results of their work.
Daniel Fesyuk, Deputy Head of the Ministry, summed up the two-year legislative process in the defense sector at a joint meeting of the Duma Committee on the Legal Support of Development of the Organizations of the Defense Industry Committee and the Committee on the Defense Industry of the Association for Assistance to Defense Enterprises Association. The speaker had in mind all the innovations that appeared after the adoption of the Federal Law 2015 “On Amendments to the Federal Law“ On the State Defense Order ”and certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation” in 159. Following were adopted by the Government of the Russian Federation number 208, which provides new rules for regulating the price of the state defense order, and number 1193 on the conditions of state contracts. In this block of regulations, many complaints from industrialists have caused a mechanism for settlements between enterprises through a system of separate accounts and the regulation of the activities of regulatory bodies. But Daniil Fesiuk says: “The introduction of separate accounts forced enterprises to work out advances in order to overcome control by banks and the state customer.”
The dominant ideology of the main departments responsible for lawmaking in the DIC is anti-corruption. As a result, the fight against this evil often takes on the character of campaigning and often restrains the development of the industry more than corruption itself. Some enterprises had to open up to five thousand accounts, and in order to keep track of them - to hire a huge staff. The introduction of a control system has significantly slowed the movement of funds - the average balance of accounts today amounts to hundreds of billions of rubles. Industrialists once again lost. Financiers won. Authorized banks have begun implementing pilot projects for lending to defense-industry organizations at the expense of funds placed on special accounts.
Maybe immediately shot?
The fact that legislative initiatives have an ambiguous effect, Fesyuk had to admit. According to him, all the leaders of the defense industry today form a kind of penalty company. For the failure to comply with the terms of contracts in 2016, the FAS issued over a thousand fines to officials of enterprises in the industry, and for 9 months 2017 was over a thousand and a half, even though the MIC registry includes about two thousand enterprises. “For the disruption of the performance of the state defense order, it would be necessary to respond to some officials of state customers, but the conditions of state contracts are drawn up in such a way that“ the supplier undertakes to fulfill his own risk ”and further on. The only thing missing is the word “fear,” Daniel Fesyuk tried to joke at a meeting in Rosoboronexport. However, the “defense industry” is not up to jokes, especially after President Vladimir Putin, as a priority, made a proposal to strengthen criminal liability for the inadequate performance of the state defense order.But we have legislation that it is almost impossible to do business and not violate. Existing norms in the administration of the defense industry complex often provoke the participants of the state defense order to commit unlawful acts. In this case, no one tries to understand the offender. It’s one thing when the product is delivered that the price is overstated so that the parties to the transaction spend money to build a villa on the Mediterranean coast, and it’s quite another when the overestimated price is the only way to somehow improve the state of the company's finances and save it from bankruptcy. In the existing regulatory framework, an unanswered question remains: how to get out to enterprises of the second and third levels of cooperation, if the money allocated for the state defense order accumulates on the settlement accounts of the “heads” and does not go into cooperative chains? The "smaller brothers" are forced to take loans at predatory interest. The lack of advance payment of state contracts and the lack of working capital lead to the failure to fulfill government orders on time, which entails the imposition of penalties and bankruptcy.
Capitalism against bank transfer
In Soviet times, everything would be solved simply: the suppliers of cooperation would be included in the composition of the finisher and the problem is settled. By the way, corruption and socialist methods is overcome easily. It is enough to introduce a cashless ruble, as it was in the USSR, and there is none. But as the Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Defense and Security of the Federation Council, Alexei Kondratyev, said at the meeting of the radio-electronic industry section: “We are a capitalist country, the main means of production are in private hands. We are trying to combine the state task with private ownership and profit. ” It turns out that in the first place - the protection of the interests of owners, and only then - the security of the country.
At the beginning of December last year, the Russian government approved a regulation on price regulation for products supplied under a state defense order prepared by the FAS. According to the head of the Department of Methodology in the field of the state defense order of the Federal Antimonopoly Service Pavel Suvorov, voiced at a meeting of the radio-electronic industry section in the Federation Council, the new model sounds like quite promising - motivational. But the devil is known to be in the details.
The base price for the performance of the state defense order is calculated using the cost method and then is indexed for five years according to the standards of the Ministry of Economic Development, the sixth year is a moratorium on its growth.
“If the company could save, then everything remains at its disposal. And this is the main incentive to optimize production processes and, in fact, achieve cost savings, ”explained Suvorov, the main principle of the motivational pricing system. This innovation is strongly encouraged by defense enterprises. Previously, the idea was that in the current regulatory framework, when prices for military products are considered mainly cost-based, the contractor has no incentive to reduce the cost of production.
Time fat cats
Raises issues and legislation in the field of cooperation. According to Pavel Suvorov, a defense-industrial enterprise, when purchasing market products, should strive to select suppliers in order to ensure the maximum level of quality with an optimal ratio to the price. Where it leads?
“The disruption of the supply of one of the co-operatives forces the head contractor to be responsible to the state customer,” the deputy head of the Department of Economics and Pricing of the KLA, Dmitry Kuprianov, is perplexed. - One of the key arguments cited by our opponents is that head performers must carefully select contractors. Unfortunately, the reality today is that we have 70 – 80 percent of counterparties - the only suppliers registered in CD, and we, alas, cannot choose anything. ”
In addition, Kupriyanov said that for those 40 days for which the head supplier must issue its price offer, he has to rely on some old figures that appeared in previous contracts. With this raw “total”, the general contractor goes to the customer, and thus the price is fixed. And then come the calculations of suppliers, where everything is already significantly more expensive. Accordingly, the head performer elementary falls on the increase in cost and loss of profit.
“Today, the loss of profit of the lead executor from the growth of prices on cooperation is 70 – 80 percent for PJSC UAC. And unfortunately, this risk is not eliminated even in the realities of the new document, ”says Dmitry Kupriyanov.
In short, at the exit of the FAS - the rule-making semi-finished product. Advances in the improvement of cooperation ties from the new legislation can not be expected.
In the package of motivational pricing there was no place for the offer of industrialists about the 10-percentage level of profit "golovnikov" with a long technological cycle. The head of the direction of the full life cycle of the ships of USC JSC, Yakov Berezhnoy, notes: “Well, cooperation is ours, although we do not understand how it should be managed. But we continue to assert that our risks are great. Give us a profit of at least 10 percent. In fact, today, due to cooperation, we have no profit at all. At the leading shipbuilding enterprises, if there is a profit of one or two percent, so be it healthy, and then we are going to the cons. " If the proposal of the representative of USC were accepted, it would be possible not only to secure oneself in the minefield of cooperation, but also to solve the problem of late financing. The financiers would have to run ahead of the locomotive in order to quickly transfer money to the SDO. To delay would not allow the control bodies. Now it turns out that the work on the fulfillment of the State Defense Order must be started in January, and the money to the accounts of enterprises comes at best in March and the finishers are forced to take commercial loans to purchase materials and components, in order to pay the predatory interest to fat financial cats.
There remains an open question about the composition of costs, which is now regulated by order No. 200. The procedure is developed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, consistent with all industry bodies, Roskosmos and Rosatom, with the main state customer, that is, with the Ministry of Defense, and the supervising body, the FAS Russia, reminds Pavel Suvorov. Many experts believe: the main disadvantage of this order is that it affects only the scope of production. There is no place for the performance of R & D, OCD, etc., which should be included in the cost part. In addition, Svetlana Boshno, a member of the Radio Electronics Industry Council for the Legislative Support of the Defense Industrial Complex and Military-Technical Cooperation, believes that the order number 200 is so great that it is impossible to overpower it, and ambiguities contribute to an increase in the number of violators. “The document has become unreadable. There are so many repetitions that, in a good way, it can be reduced tenfold without detriment to the meaning. ”
Peter Vernik, member of the Council for the Legislative Support of the Military-Industrial Complex and Military-Technical Cooperation under the Federation Council, sees the cause of all misfortunes in that the discussion of the new, “quasi-two-hundredth order” takes place not in industry, but in a narrow circle: is unacceptable. These people do not have to perform. The law will allow the Ministry of Finance to save money. But as a result, the industry for which we cheer will not be able to fulfill state defense orders. ”
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