The participants of the SPIEF discussion ‘Oceans and Global Transformation: What Kind of Fleet does Russia and the World Need?’ came to the conclusion that Russia should develop its own civilian fleet, which will contribute both to food security of the country and progress in fishing industry.
‘We didn't do civilian shipbuilding. It has always been on the second place. Now we should turn around to it,’ said Igor Levitin, Aide to the President of the Russian Federation. The same position was expressed by Deputy of the State Duma Viacheslav Fetisov. According to him, attention should be paid to shipbuilding in order to provide safety in all directions. Fetisov stressed that having missed the moment of construction of own ships ‘we are in a difficult situation.’
Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation Viktor Evtukhov and Chief Executive Officer of United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) Alexei Rakhmanov believe that the main task of shipbuilding today is to achieve technological sovereignty, in particular it concerns supplies of foreign equipment. ‘Today we do not need to rely on our partners anymore. It is quite clear that strategically we most likely will not have to count on it,’ Rakhmanov commented.
‘We should not have a critical dependence on those countries that refuse to supply us with equipment,’ Evtukhov said.
The moderator of the discussion Ivan Timofeev noticed that fishing is ‘the branch, where the problems of food safety and shipbuilding development come together.’ According to him, ‘fleet renewal is an urgent task here.’
The head of Russian Federal Agency for Fishery Ilya Shestakov said that fishermen provide about one third of civil shipbuilding orders due to the effectiveness of non-financial incentives. ‘These are trawlers that can process 100% of catches right on board, these are modern vessels that operate under ECO-S certification,’ Shestakov said about fishing vessels being built in Russia today. He also noted that the construction of such number of fishing vessels became possible due to allocation of quotas.
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