Moscow, 24th May. /ITAR-TASS/. One of top priority questions in the development of ship building industry is a gradual withdraw from ‘offshore schemes’. Sergey Shishkarev, a member of the Marine Board, commented to ITAR-TASS correspondent on a meeting with leaders of ship building enterprises.
“We must restrore our country’s leadership in world ship industry, since for the time being our shipping companies secure not more than 10 per cent of Russian foreign trade operations. ‘We must provide not only administrative, but also economic conditions so that the whole fleet that belongs to Russian was restored under the Russian flag’, – Shishkarev explained. According to him, the situation when the majority of Russian export operations are carried out by foreign shipping companies is unacceptable. ‘At the same time we constantly face the situation when vessels with Russian teams on board sail under foreign flags, face emergencies or extreme situations and ask Russian authorities for help’, – he added.
At the meeting Mr. Shishkarev stated that the ‘offshore schemes’ in ship building could be avoided through the launch of the Second Ship Registry. In his words, this will also help to provide Russian ship-repairing enterprises with contracts for state orders.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin who presided on today’s meeting stated that orders in ship building and ship-repair will be placed abroad only after approval received by the Deputy Prime Minister in person.
Shishkarev also said that further steps in ship building industry development must be accompanied by the emergence of real financial support and public-private partnership tools. ‘We will scrutinize those instruments that are already in the possession of Russian ship building industry in order to form suggestions for amendments that need to be implemented to industry’s legislation’ – he said. According to him, changes to legislations are indespensable. ‘The law on ship industry support virtually does not work at all. We need to understand which exactly changes are essential in order to create a set of tools to support the industry, among other things financially’, – he said and added that loan services and taxation must also be regulated through this law.
Taking into account actual work on preparation of the strategy of United Shipbuilding Corporation, Dmitry Rogosin also admitted the possibility of making corrections to certain state ship building programmes. ‘We will make decisions on usage of actual ship building facilities, on creation of new ones and on funds redistribution of funds that are already established in stated programmes’ – he said at the meeting.