MOSCOW, March 22 (RIA Novosti) - President Vladimir Putin signed decrees on the establishment of the United Shipbuilding Corporation and a shipbuilding and maintenance technology center, the Kremlin press service said Thursday.
The United Shipbuilding Corporation is a government-sponsored project to combine all state financial assets in the shipbuilding sector. It will be 100% owned by the state.
It was decided at Monday's meeting between the president and the Cabinet that the corporation will be headed by Alexander Burutin, the presidential aide for the defense sector.
Sergei Ivanov, Russia's first deputy prime minister, said he believes the head office of the shipbuilding corporation should be based in St. Petersburg, the country's second-largest city where the main shipbuilding R&D bureaus are concentrated.
The Kremlin also said the united corporation will be set up in four months' time and will have three subsidiaries - the Western Shipbuilding Center in St. Petersburg, the Northern Shipbuilding and Maintenance Center in Severodvinsk and the Far Eastern Shipbuilding and Maintenance Center in Vladivostok.
Putin charged the government with establishing a special commission to integrate the shipbuilding enterprises.
Ivanov, who has been put in charge of the project and already heads the United Aircraft Building Corporation, said Monday that Russian docks were overloaded with military orders, with the main problem being "insufficient equipment and capacity for civilian shipbuilding."
In December, Ivanov said Russia would have three shipbuilding holdings this year. "We will have several major shipbuilding holdings, including a separate Far Eastern holding, because it is important for us to retain positions in Pacific shipbuilding," Ivanov said at the time, adding that Russia's civilian shipbuilding sector was in dire straights, unlike the military sector.
He said Russia built very few civilian ships despite the volume of foreign trade through its ports being higher than Soviet-time records, and added that the United Shipbuilding Corporation would make use of military shipbuilding facilities for civilian purposes.
"Russia has largely integrated into the global economy, much of its exports are transported by sea, but in foreign rather than Russian ships," Ivanov said, calling for putting more effort into civilian shipbuilding.
The first deputy prime minister, then deputy prime minister, also said late last year that Russian civilian ships could not compete with foreign rivals in terms of price because of high VAT rates and substantial import custom duties on ship components.
