MOSCOW, November 23 (Itar-Tass) — Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has leveled tough criticism at the pricing practices adopted by the companies supplying aircraft technologies for the Russian Armed Forces.
As he addressed a regular session of the cabinet of ministers that focused on a program for development of the aircraft manufacturing industry, he asked Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev either to set a ceiling for price increases or to permit purchases of aviation technologies and equipment abroad.
“We can meet the targets for the purchases /of aircraft/ in terms of the monies spent but it won’t be adequate in what concerns the number of items, to say nothing of their quality,” Shoigu said.
He complained over a runaway growth of prices that occurred in the past two years, saying the prices have gone up three to five times for helicopters and more than two times for jets.
“The situation goes on unabated and unless someone puts a full stop to it, we’ll have to resort to the other option, that is, to introduce competition by way of bringing the technologies manufactured abroad and that’s certainly a very unwelcome turn of events,” Shoigu said.
“Still we’d like to proceed from the quantitative parameters and not from the size of budgetary allocations,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’ve failed to tap common languages with the manufacturers in this sphere for the time being.”