The state defense order for the current year is almost broken
On October 10, at the meeting of the Federation Council, Deputy Minister of Economic Development A.Klepach stated that the state defense order was disrupted in the current year and possibly disrupted in the next year. This loud statement was made against the background of Anatoly Serdyukov’s repeated assurances that all problematic issues relating to the implementation of the state defense order would be resolved as soon as possible.At the hearings devoted to the consideration of the draft state budget for 2012 – 2014, A.Klepach literally stated the following: “The state defense order for the current year has been fulfilled, definitely, will not happen, and this will not happen with a very high degree of probability” The Deputy Chairman of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation, Valery Goreglyad, supported Klepach’s concerns and noted that defense spending is one of the least transparent and most ineffective in all Russian budgets of the past few years. “The 23 trillion rubles that were provided before the 2020 year is an incredibly large amount, but whether it will be properly mastered is highly unlikely,” said Goreglyad.
At the same time, the Ministry of Defense categorically refutes the failure of the defense order this year. The ministry confirms that the process of placing orders for the current year is proceeding normally, and the necessary documents have been prepared for concluding 60% contracts for the next year, which will be signed immediately after the approval of the new budget. Last week, Defense Minister Serdyukov once again noted that the placement of the defense order for the current year was “almost complete.” "Of the allocated amount equal to 580 billion rubles, it remains to master a little twenty," - said the minister. It is this amount of money that the Ministry of Defense contracts with the United Shipbuilding Corporation and the Moscow Institute of Heating Engineering are evaluated. The military department has not yet concluded a contract with USC for the construction of the new Yasen nuclear submarine, as well as the 2 of the Borey submarine missile carriers capable of carrying the Bulava ballistic missiles. The USC also confirms that the contracting process is still ongoing. And according to RIA News, First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, Alexander Sukhorukov, announced that the Ministry had decided to postpone the execution of part of the contracts on state defense orders from 2011 to the next 2012 year. This, in particular, is about 3-m and 4-m regimental sets of C-400 SAMs, as well as about the purchase of training and combat aircraft Yak-130.
The reason for the transfer of deliveries of these types of weapons was, according to the deputy minister, the delayed execution of contracts with representatives of defense industry enterprises. The protracted negotiation process of the military with the enterprises of the military-industrial complex and the late conclusion of contracts by the Russian Ministry of Defense explains the need to reduce prices for products of defense enterprises.
The topic of the implementation of the state defense order was one of the central ones after the May meeting in the presence of President Medvedev, who gave officials a real spree for disrupting the planned deadlines for the implementation of the defense order. On instructions from Prime Minister Putin, which he gave back in August, both Minister of Defense Serdyukov and Deputy Prime Minister Sechin tried on the solution of the problem of the state defense order. However, the timing of the implementation of the defense order was delayed all the time. The deadline for resolving the problem was last appointed to mid-September.
Meanwhile, President Medvedev was already accusing officials of disrupting the defense order in 2010, when they managed to master only 70% of the amount allocated from the budget, and the year before, the defense order was executed only half.
In order to prevent a repetition of the situation, in the next 2012 year, the Ministry of Defense plans to implement the state defense order under the new rules. The main innovation that should significantly simplify the relations of the ministry with industrialists is the total prepayment even for transactions under those contracts, the implementation of which implies long periods (a year or more). The officials of the Ministry of Defense emphasize the fact that “there are no such convenient conditions for cooperation for representatives of the military-industrial complex, perhaps nowhere else in the world.”
A member of the public council under the Ministry of Defense I. Korotchenko expresses confidence that after the total introduction of the practice of making prepayments, the system of federal contracts will work, finally, without failures. However, according to Korotchenko, the ministry wants the representatives of the military industrial complex to make the cost structure of products open. "There is evidence that the profitability of some contracts reaches 800%", - said the expert.
Meanwhile, industrialists have their own position regarding the new settlement system. They agree that the new system is more transparent than the old one, where both orders and control over their execution were concentrated in one hand. However, the Defense Ministry proposes calculating prices using annual deflators in 1 – 2%, which will be similar to economic suicide. Therefore, the USC insists that in the implementation of the defense order it is necessary to focus on the level of inflation determined by the forecasts of the Ministry of Economic Development, that is, 6 – 7%.
The head of one of the large defense enterprises is that the situation around the defense order is called critical. “The old mechanism for implementing the defense order was destroyed to the ground, and the new one was not created not only administratively, but also from a regulatory and legal point of view,” the manager said. “In an amicable way, we should work out a new mechanism for implementing the state defense order on individual contracts.” Among other things, the guarantees promised by the state under contracts of defense order discredit themselves in their current form, since they do not compensate for the costs of paying loans.
Konstantin Makienko, deputy head of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, identifies three main components in the current problem. “This is the introduction of a new contracting system, the mass commencement of procurement and the departure from his post to another place of work of a significant figure in the armament procurement system - Deputy Minister Vladimir Popovkin,” the expert believes. However, Makienko believes that categorical statements about the failure of the defense order are extremely unexpected. According to the expert, at the moment the process of bargaining is going on between the interested parties.
It should be noted that the military department planned to purchase 2011 helicopters, 109 airplanes, 35 multi-purpose submarines, 3 combat surface ships, as well as 1 air defense missiles in the framework of the state defense order 21. At the end of March this year, Defense Minister Serdyukov said that, according to the 2011 state defense order of the year, two strategic nuclear submarines, 36 strategic ballistic missiles, as well as two dozen strategic cruise missiles were to be supplied to the troops. The total amount of state defense order financing in the current 2011 year is about one and a half trillion rubles.
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