Paul Goble
Staunton,
June 23 – Russia’s shipbuilding sector, both civilian and military, has significantly
contracted over the last four years and appears certain to continue that trend at
least this year and next, according to a detailed new 73-page report prepared by
Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.
The
full report is available at dcenter.hse.ru/data/2018/06/03/Рынок
продукции судостроения 2018.pdf. It has now been summarized at both iq.hse.ru/news/220398683.html
and thinktanks.by/publication/2018/06/22/rossiya-rezko-sokraschaet-stroitelstvo-korabley.html).
In 2014, the study says, Russian
yards produced 252 large ships (those over 20,000 tons). In 2015, that number
fell to 200; in 2016, to 168; and in 2017 to 150. The Higher School projects
that it will produce 108 and that in 2019, it will launch only 79, less than a
third of the number it completed only five years earlier.
The number of civilian ships
produced fell at a more rapid rate than the number of military ones, the report
continues; but the latter number fell as well. Nonetheless, of the 770 ships
produced in the last four years, 434 of them were for the Russian military,
both the navy and other siloviki.
In three of the five Russian
shipyards, building vessels for the navy and for government projects like the
Northern Sea Route now predominates, driving out civilian production which has
been having a hard time attracting investors in any case.
Russia now is not among the world leaders
in shipbuilding. It lags far behind China, South Korea and Japan, which
together produce more than 90 percent of the world’s commercial vessels. Russia
in 2016, the Higher School of Economics study says, produced only 0.5 percent
of them.
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