While the machine tool industry is preparing to become the flagship of qualitative changes in the monetary policy of the industrial sector in Russia, its participants enter their production in the "Red Book" of the country's technological competencies
The Russian economy in general and its industry in particular are once again showing negative dynamics of real growth rates, or the so-called zero prospects. This was announced at the end of April by Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. Probably, this year the market will feel a technical recession with all the ensuing consequences in terms of capital and direct investment. According to the results of the first quarter of 2014, the Ministry of Economic Development estimates GDP growth at 0.8% compared to the same period last year. At the same time, the Russian industry grew in annual terms by just over 1%, but compared to the fourth quarter of 2013, its decline was 12.4%.
The Minister of Economic Development Aleksey Ulyukaev could not please the market players either, calling the economic situation in the country unstable and pointing out an investment pause, which in the language of economic statistics means an almost five percent reduction in capital investments in the first quarter of 2014 compared to the previous year. Probably, the central link in this problem is the massive capital outflow from the country, which reached by the beginning of April, according to some estimates, $ 50.6 billion. Nevertheless, the capital flight we are witnessing is apparently another decisive step towards the largest all-Russian import substitution campaign in the last 70-80 years. According to Alexei Ulyukaev, the situation in the industry is not so bad, which is explained by the increase in import substitution, including due to the weakening of the Russian ruble.
Unobtrusive regulation
So, the persons responsible for achieving the target indicators of the Russian industry are faced with a very difficult task: on the one hand, the economy stops growing, on the other hand, it is necessary to give a strong impetus to the domestic market, both to stimulate demand and to activate supply. At the same time, one should not forget that the economy is in a state of obvious stagflation, that is, the recessionary spiral is aggravated by growing inflation. At the end of 2014, the forecasted inflation rate will be 6.5-7%. Therefore, it is logical to expect the beginning of a new wave of neoclassical economic thinking, in particular monetarism, which has proved to be very effective in the medium term in the United States, starting with the economic course of President Ronald Reagan (1980-1988).
However, as the current monetary policy shows, the Russian economy is not yet ready for full-fledged deregulation. In particular, this applies to rates for medium and long-term lending to industry and refinancing rates.
Since the second half of 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia (Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation) has been revising the program “Development of the domestic machine-tool building and tool industry” for 2011-2016, adopted several years ago, in favor of the “Development of Industry and increasing its competitiveness. Machine tool industry "for 2012-2020. The total planned amount of funds allocated for all types of industry is 240.8 billion rubles. The goal of the program is declared "to create a competitive, stable, structurally balanced industry in Russia." The developers of the program named the products of the machine tool industry as one of the basic investment goods - for the development of this industry, an import substitution strategy was chosen: "reducing the dependence of Russian strategic organizations of the machine-building and military-industrial complexes on the supply of foreign technological means."
However, in contrast to many cumbersome and unspecified programs, the above-mentioned measures to increase the investment attractiveness of the machine tool industry, presented by the Minister of Industry and Trade of Russia Denis Manturov, boil down to an extremely important step. We are talking about the creation of an industrial development fund, which will provide targeted lending to industrial enterprises at a rate of no more than 5%. In return for an almost threefold reduction in the cost of borrowed funds, the applicant enterprises will have to prove the investment feasibility of the projects for which they will apply for loans. So, back in September 2013, at a meeting of the scientific and coordinating council on the program for the development of the machine tool industry, First Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of Russia Gleb Nikitin noted: “Each project, firstly, must be confirmed by the demand of a specific customer, and secondly, a list of investors and a clear organizational structure”.
The fund in question will become a special credit program for VEB and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Thus, VEB will be responsible for the consideration of applications and examination of projects, as well as for attracting additional financial resources and bringing them to the recipient. In addition, there is a proposal, voiced by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, to zero the federal part of the income tax for the manufacturing industry. Such a measure can indeed significantly increase the investment attractiveness of enterprises in the industry, the profitability of which does not exceed 10%, and often amounts to 3-5%.
According to the data of the Committee for Industrial Policy and Innovation of St. Petersburg, at present, by the decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 3 dated January 3, 2014, the Rules for the provision of subsidies from the federal budget to Russian organizations have been approved. Within the framework of this resolution, it is planned to compensate part of the cost of paying interest on loans received from Russian credit institutions in 2014-2016 for the implementation of new comprehensive investment projects in priority areas of the civil industry within the framework of the state program subprogram. St. Petersburg enterprises, including those from the machine-tool industry, are also involved in the implementation of this resolution and in obtaining subsidies from the federal budget. In particular, OOO Kirov-Stankomash, together with OAO Stankoprom, are implementing an investment project to organize the production of high-tech machine tools.
On the verge of extinction
A sharp increase in the potential demand for domestic machine tool building is primarily signaled by the state itself, represented by the military-industrial complex. “Our main task is to manage to create the required number of production facilities to ensure the predicted order in 2016,” says Gleb Nikitin.
At the same time, market players testify to the total non-competitiveness of Russian machine tool products. “To increase the mutual attractiveness of doing business for both manufacturers and distributors of the industry, special attention should be paid to this issue, for example, to ease the tax burden. Thus, the priority direction of the Finval Group of Companies is the solution of technological problems of any complexity on the basis of the use of high-tech equipment of foreign production, since there are no worthy domestic analogues of these machines at the moment , - notes the director of the technical center of CJSC Finval-Industry (company - distributor of machine tools and tools, bearings and technological equipment) Yuri Yurikov.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the production of machine tools in January-May 2013 is estimated at 95.9% compared to January-May 2012. At the same time, the production of metal-cutting machines in comparison with January-May 2012 amounted to 88, 8%, CNC lathes - 79, 7, press-forging machines - 89, 6, woodworking machines - 98%. According to the data for 2012, the rate of renewal of technological equipment does not exceed 1% per year, and the moral and physical deterioration of fixed assets of machine-tool plants reaches 70-80%. The total share of machine tool building in GDP is several times less than that of the leading countries of the industry: China, Italy, Germany, Japan, South Korea, the United States and Taiwan. As a result, about 90% of the machine tool capacities purchased by domestic factories today are foreign equipment.
Thus, according to Yuri Yurikov, “the currently operated fleet of domestic equipment significantly prevails at almost all machine-building enterprises in Russia. However, 80% of this is continuously aging universal equipment. In recent history, the domestic machine tool industry is going through the hardest times and has come close to complete degradation. Today it is no longer necessary to talk about any significant competition between domestic machine tools and foreign models. It is for this reason, without a doubt, that the advantage in choosing a supplier of equipment is given to foreign companies. Thus, Russian consumers recognize both the technical and economic advantages of the latter."
Machine tools manufactured in Russia are low- and medium-price equipment that does not belong to the high-tech category, according to the Committee for Industrial Policy and Innovation of St. Petersburg. “The efficiency of the Russian machine tool industry is low. The biggest problems are associated with unsatisfactory organization of production, sales of products and low innovation activity,”the government of St. Petersburg confirms. In addition, foreign companies at the state level are provided with significant benefits - both in taxes and in the export of their products to other countries.
According to Mikhail Korotkikh, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Technology of Structural Materials and Materials Science at St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, the restoration of production of means of production in Russia is the most important component of the country's economic security. Indeed, the industry cannot succeed in a much-needed technological breakthrough using only its own funds. This is largely justified by the extremely long, by modern standards, payback periods for the products of the machine tool industry. Mikhail Korotkikh also noted that the industry is forced to overcome a difficult path: to build an integral automated chain, eliminating human participation through the spread of robotics. Active market participants have more than once sent detailed appeals to the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government and Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission under the Government of the Russian Federation Dmitry Rogozin about the inadmissibility of further blind sponsoring of machine tool technologies from competing countries. The fact is that when purchasing equipment from, say, a German company, the order price also includes a certain percentage, which is redirected by the manufacturer to the fund for future design engineering developments in this industry. Consequently, with each subsequent purchase, Russian consumers of foreign equipment increase the gap between the global and domestic levels of competitiveness of machine tool products.
Light at the end of the tunnel
In the Northwestern Federal District, the machine tool industry is represented by a small number of enterprises, often with a rich Soviet past. Among the largest regional representatives of the industry are Kirov StankoMash LLC (a subsidiary of Kirovsky Zavod, a relatively recently created enterprise based on its own developments of the Kirovsky plant and bankrupt enterprises of the industry, St. named after Ilyich), CJSC St. Petersburg Machine-Tool Plant TBS, CJSC Baltic Machine-Tool Plant (St. Petersburg), LLC Vologda Machine-Tool Plant, OJSC Petrozavodsk Machine-Tool Plant, OJSC Severny Kommunar (Vologda).
The state of the machine tool industry in St. Petersburg reflects the general state of this sphere in the country, the Committee for Industrial Policy and Innovation of St. Petersburg notes. Nevertheless, there are currently some positive shifts in this industry. In the northern capital, with the support of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs of St. Petersburg and the Russian Association of Manufacturers of the Machine-Tool Industry "Stankoinstrument", the Cluster of the Machine-Tool Industry has been operating since 2012.
The cluster united almost all manufacturers of machine tool equipment of the North-West to achieve a common goal - to ensure the life cycle (R&D - putting into production - serial production), as well as to actively participate in creating a modern market for innovative high-tech equipment and technological services for leading sectors of the economy and industry of Russia. The cluster includes such enterprises as Kirov-Stankomash LLC, OJSC Special Design Bureau for Machine Information and Measuring Systems with Pilot Production, St. Petersburg Precision Machine Tool Plant LLC, CJSC Special Design Bureau for Heavy and Unique Machine Tools and other In addition to this cluster, the city has an Innovative and Technological Cluster of Mechanical Engineering and Metalworking, which also includes machine tool enterprises. Cluster formations are an effective tool for increasing the competitiveness of the domestic machine tool industry, in particular St. Petersburg.
Most representatives of the industry seek to concentrate the previously accumulated experience, and most importantly, the engineering and design developments of Soviet machine-tool enterprises, which often went bankrupt and liquidated. However, such efforts need to be supported by the development of an integrated science-intensive infrastructure, placing at the forefront the achievement of the country's technological independence. It is practically impossible to develop the industry with the existing financing system, especially if we are talking about a qualitative leap in the technological level.
The measures taken today to consolidate efforts in the industry have not yet yielded clear results. Neither the program of the Ministry of Industry and Trade “Development of Industry and Increasing its Competitiveness”, nor attempts to create a single design and engineering center (the so-called Interstate Eurasian Engineering Center) with a branch network for the modernization and technical re-equipment of enterprises in the field of mechanical engineering and metallurgy are not already operating tools for the restoration of machine tool industry. And finally, there is no systemic interest of industry participants and specialists in related areas to restore lost competencies and find at least acceptable niches for a new quality round in development. Domestic enterprises are still alone with the machine tool market in an attempt to restore the balance of power in it.
