This week Rosstat published information on salaries in federal authorities, many were surprised to see these figures. Rosoboronpostavka, which did not really work, became the record holder for wages. Its employees receive an average of 135,000 rubles. per month or more than 1.6 million rubles per year (on average, salaries for other federal departments are at the level of 728 thousand rubles).
Rosoboronpostavka, a federal agency for the supply of weapons, military and special equipment, and materiel, was established in February 2007 and began operations in 2008. True, the beginning is only formal. The security forces from other departments and ministries were extremely reluctant to transfer their powers to conclude agreements to the newly formed structure and tried in every possible way to sabotage the work of the new department, said Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine, who is also a member of the Public Council under the Russian Ministry of Defense. …
In May last year, the agency became subordinate to the Ministry of Defense. In accordance with the presidential decree number 589, the maximum number of employees of the central office of Rosoboronpostavka was fixed at 980 people, the maximum number of employees of the territorial bodies of this department was set at 120 people (the figures do not take into account the number of service personnel). The agency's wage fund is established by the Russian government under the same order.
A source close to the department noted that before the reform of Rosoboronpostavka, the number of employees here did not even reach 10 people, the organization did not even have its own premises. Agency employees were in one of the rooms in the Rosoboronexport building on Ozerkovaya embankment. True, even now, according to Rosstat, the staffing level of the agency is only at the level of 15, 5%, while its staff already has 152 employees.
Interesting in this story is that in the first half of last year, before the agency was transferred to the Ministry of Defense, the salary in the department was at the level of 50-70 thousand rubles, while 70 thousand were received by the head of the agency. Initially, he was directly subordinate to the chairman of the government, now - to the country's defense minister. It turns out that the agency's status has decreased, and salaries have grown several times.
In total, Rosoboronpostavka received 920 million rubles from the Russian budget in 2010. If during the same year the agency's staff were 100% staffed (980 people) and received the same average salary of 135 thousand rubles, then only the deductions to the payroll would have exceeded 2 billion rubles.
At the same time, the principles of calculating salaries in the agency remain hidden. Most experts believe that such a high salary may be associated with the desire of the Russian leadership to prevent corruption in the implementation of the state defense order. Professor Sergei Vikulov, editor of the magazine "Arms and Economics", believes that salaries at Rosoboronspostavka are really dictated by the naive belief that a large salary can keep an official from the temptation of a bribe. Igor Korotchenko also agrees with him, noting that if people are engaged in concluding contracts for billions and tens of billions of rubles, while receiving ridiculous money, then in this case they are very strongly motivated to “cut” budget funds.
Due to corruption in various departments of the Ministry of Defense involved in the implementation of the state defense order, as well as in the top management of a number of military-industrial complex enterprises in Russia, two previous programs for the purchase of weapons were disrupted. The program included various military equipment with well-defined tactical and technical characteristics, in fact, equipment with already underestimated characteristics was taken into service.
The Accounts Chamber of Russia calculated that the state defense order for 2009 was only half completed. In 2010, the situation has improved, but not dramatically. According to experts from Nezavisimaya Gazeta, non-compliance with the norms amounted to almost 30%. In December 2010, the Ministry of Defense submitted to the government the third program of state armaments, calculated until 2020. The volume of its financing will exceed 19 trillion. rubles, but no one is ready to name the percentage of completion yet.
Igor Korotchenko places high hopes on the fact that the salaries of Rosoboronpostavka employees will motivate them to perform their duties responsibly and more efficiently. In turn, Sergey Tolkachev, an expert on economics of the military-industrial complex (professor at the State University of Management), names other possible reasons for such high salaries of agency officials. He suggests that such high salaries can be associated with departmental instructions, where there is a clear connection between salaries and work results, which here is the number of contracts concluded.
At the same time, only a small part of contracts for the purchase of weapons and special equipment for law enforcement agencies still passes through Rosoboronpostavka. Therefore, Sergei Tolkachev proposed another simpler hypothesis. Perhaps such salaries are due to the fact that the department is not fully formed and at the moment includes mainly top-level managers who have appropriate salaries.
Well, in general, looking for some logical explanation in the intricacies of the domestic bureaucratic apparatus is as ridiculous as predicting the behavior of crazy citizens, the professor says with irony. In this case, the lack of elementary principles of subordination and orderliness is manifested in the actions of the entire Russian management system, he notes. According to Igor Korotchenko, it is too early to judge the effectiveness of the new agency, since it has not yet been fully formed. In his opinion, already at the end of this - early 2012, Rosoboronpostavka will undertake the conclusion of all contracts for the supply of weapons and various military equipment.