Krasnoyarsk/Moscow, July 19 (RIA Novosti) - Russian state-owned satellite manufacturers may soon be amalgamated into a unified corporation, a spokesman for a leading satellite manufacturer said.
The spokesman for the Zheleznogorsk-based company Reshetnikov Applied Mechanics, which designs and manufacturers about 70% of Russia's communications satellites, said his company was set to head the new corporation.
He said that the president of the Federal Space Agency, Anatoli Perminov, had submitted plans for the merger to the government's defense industry commission last week and that the commission had endorsed them at its July 15 session, chaired by Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov.
The Reshetnikov Applied Mechanics representative said the new entity would bring together ten Russian government-owned companies based in Moscow, Tomsk, Omsk, Rostov-on-Don, and Zheleznogorsk. Each company would become a subsidiary of the new corporation while retaining its independent legal status.
The government has so far made no official comment on the merger plans. A source from the Cabinet said he had no information on the creation of such a corporation.
