Russian Navy Fiasco

Russian authorities have not found the money to build nearly 1,500 civilian ships.

Russia plans to build 2,062 new civilian ships by 2035, but financing for almost 1,500 of them has not yet been determined. This follows from the government's updated prospective plan for civil shipbuilding, sources familiar with the document told "Vedomosti". According to them, the authorities are ready to allocate a total of 1.14 trillion rubles from the budget for the construction of 593 ships. However, this amount will not be enough for their production: 1.87 trillion rubles from their own funds should be invested by the companies-customers, and another 290 billion rubles will be received through leasing programs. At the moment, contracts have been signed for the construction of 358 vessels, 79 contracts have not yet been confirmed by customers, and another 71 have already been completed.

In particular, the government's plan envisages the construction of 115 ice-class vessels for the Northern Sea Route (NSR). Five of them are currently under construction. Under the program of investment quotas ("quotas under the keel" - issuing permits for the extraction of fish or marine bioresources in exchange for investment in new vessels), the construction of 107 vessels under the first stage and 34 vessels under the second stage has been ensured, according to the data of Rosrybolovstvo. So far, 48 vessels have been built, 46 of which - under the first stage of the program, explained the source of "Vedomosti". According to his data, within the framework of both stages the construction of 67 vessels with the total cost of more than 278 billion rubles has been ensured by solvent demand.

In addition, the construction of 111 cargo vessels of the "river-sea" class with the cost of more than 123 billion rubles has been ensured. Among them are those that are built under the programs of preferential leasing of the State Transport Leasing Company (GTLC) and Mashpromleasing. Such vessels are used to supply Russian products for export, including along the international transport corridor North-South.

The government earlier almost halved the financing of the program of preferential leasing of civilian vessels for 2023-2028 - to 134.85 billion rubles. The number of ships to be built at Russian shipyards under this program was reduced from 260 to 219. The list excluded expensive projects - large-capacity vessels, container ships, Valdai-45R hydrofoil vessels, Beluga passenger vessels, as well as Project 82185A fishing trawlers and RST-27 tankers.

The main problem of building civilian ships in Russia remains high cost. According to the estimation of the general director of "Infoline-analytics" Mikhail Burmistrov, it is 2.5-3 times higher than in China. This is the result of low labor productivity and large-scale lag in the level of automation and robotization, as well as the high cost of capital and labor. Therefore, according to the expert, any mass construction of ships in China "may completely bury Russian shipbuilding".

You can support the website Charter97.org

MULTI-CURRENCY ACCOUNT FOR ASSISTANCE:

Bank's name: Bank Millennium S.A.
Address: ul. Stanislawa Zaryna, 2A, 02-593, Warszawa
IBAN: PL97116022020000000216711123
SWIFT: BIGBPLPW
Name of the account holder: Fundacja “KARTA ‘97”
Purpose/title of payment: Donation for statuary aims

You can contact us by the e-mail charter97@gmail.com