| The state defense order in Russia exceeded revenues from arms sales A year ago, on January 21, the Regulations on the Federal Service for State Defense Orders were approved by presidential decree. This structure has existed for almost three years - since March 11, 2003. Its main function is to control the activities of 37 Russian government customers (the main one is the Ministry of Defense) and organizations executing state defense orders. During all this time, the general public knew little about her. They said: formation is underway, personnel are being selected. And the leadership at the top said: do something, and then we’ll see whether to keep you or liquidate you. But Andrei Belyaninov, appointed director of the Federal Service for State Defense Procurement, answered: if you do something, then something will happen.
The active phase of the service began in April last year. Her area of responsibility is very wide: it is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of funds invested in state defense orders, this year - over 500 billion rubles. The amount is really huge, but still, for comparison, the United States plans to annually invest $165 billion in its defense industry, and over a five-year period to invest about $1 trillion in military science alone.
Following a habit left over from his previous position as general director of Rosoboronexport, Mr. Belyaninov focused his attention on weapons and military equipment in his new post. However, I soon realized that logistics support is an equal component of the country’s defense capability: people in uniform must be fed and clothed. And there is also capital construction and medicine. All these areas require control and supervision. In the defense-industrial complex, Mr. Belyaninov’s service is already called the “accounts chamber for state defense orders.” By the way, the official Accounts Chamber and its head Sergei Stepashin went without any obstacles to delineate the spheres of fiscal activity: there are so many violations that no new controller is superfluous. Moreover, specialists from these two departments sometimes work in the same team.
400 inspections carried out by the service revealed more than 1,300 various violations, some of the materials were transferred to the prosecutor's office. One of the most common flaws is that competitions and tenders were not held uniformly for all government customers when purchasing products for law enforcement agencies. But today, a transparent competitive bidding system is being created, new regional participants have been attracted, and the purchase price for some products (for example, flour, millet) for law enforcement agencies has been halved.
One of the service's tasks for the near future is to establish a federal contract system. There is also an example - a similar system that has been worked out over decades in the United States. In our country, so-called long contracts began to be introduced only last year, but even today there are only a few tens of tens of thousands of three-year contracts in the state defense order. The issue of creating a contracting agency has practically been resolved.
Mr. Belyaninov intends to restore order in the area of standardization. In particular, with the help of the Research Institute of Standardization transferred to his service, which was renamed Rosoboronstandart. Its experts found out that several dozen standards need to be adopted for fuel alone, but today only seven have been adopted. In Russia, instead of standards, technical regulations are used, which is not the same thing. Failure to comply with standards at all should be considered a violation of the law. During the work of the service, the number of defense industry enterprises that have implemented a quality management system for defense products has increased significantly. It is based on a domestic standard harmonized with international ones. Andrei Belyaninov intends to introduce this system at all defense industry enterprises by 2008. He is also going to implement a long-standing idea - to take under his wing a military acceptance system that still works ineffectively.
In addition to the Research Institute of Standardization, the service was given two more serious scientific structures related to economic analysis: the All-Russian Research Institute of Intersectoral Information - the Federal Information and Analytical Center for the Defense Industry (VIMI) and the Central Research Institute of Economics, Informatics and Management Systems.
Today, the service is creating its own territorial offices throughout the country, which will locally monitor unified competitions and tenders. However, the Federal Service for State Defense Procurement cannot be called a purely fiscal body - during the “reporting period” its employees, together with Rosprom and the regional administrations, were able to suspend the bankruptcy procedure at five strategically important enterprises of the defense industry.
Andrei Belyaninov believes that a law should be adopted on the execution of the state defense order - as on the execution of the state budget. Because there are problems with execution, while there are no problems with financing. This year, the state defense order exceeded the amount of revenue from the sale of weapons and military equipment abroad: $8 billion versus $6 billion. But, and this is another conclusion from the director of the Federal Service for State Defense Order, it is necessary to technically re-equip defense enterprises, otherwise no increase in funds for state defense orders will be possible will give results.
By the end of the third year of the structure's existence, the main question was resolved - whether such a service is needed at all. It is necessary, even if it plays the role of a plywood figure of a policeman, which is installed in Europe in busy areas: the driver knows that the policeman is made of wood, but still involuntarily slows down. Nikolay POROSKOV |
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