"The current lending conditions, pledging requirements and tax rates lead to a substantial 20-25 % increase in the price of ships built at Russian shipyards for domestic customers who, under such circumstances, naturally choose to place orders with foreign shipbuilders. As a result, Russia's leading shipyards are working to just 25-35% of their capacity," Mr. Khristenko said.
According to him, this trend has been in place for more than a decade. "Due to regulatory and organizational deficiencies, Russian shipbuilding sector cannot start wide-ranged reforms required for comprehensive modernization of the country's transport and fishing fleets," the Minister pointed out.
Among other things, Mr. Khristenko said that the hulls of 30 out of 80 ships built in Russia in 2003 were fitted out at foreign instead of domestic shipyards. Only three of the fifteen new transport ships built for Russian shipping companies last year were manufactured at domestic shipyards (3% of the total work volume).
"Low capacity utilization does not let Russian shipbuilders accumulate sufficient funds required for their technical upgrading and modernization, nor for reduction of the manufacturing period and development of new-generation ships," Mr. Khristenko emphasized.
"Building specialized ships and machinery for development of Russia's unique oil and gas shelf deposits is going to be an extremely vital area of the domestic civil shipbuilding sector in the next decade," the minister stressed.
He pointed out that development of the Arctic shelf in particular would require construction of numerous transport, service and technical vessels specifically designed for work in harsh climatic conditions. "These ships and specialiazed floating structures must be designed primarily by Russian engineers and build at Russian shipyards," the Minister said, reminding the audience that two Arctic-rated oil platforms, D-6 (Lukoil) and Prirazlomnaya, had already been manufactured at the Sevmash Works (Rosneft).
According to Mr. Khristenko, the current lack of universally-accepted measures of state regulation encouraging development of the domestic shipbuilding sector is the major factor hindering further progress in the industry.
