MOSCOW, August 6. /TASS/. Russia will build more than 1,200 ships, seacraft and other units of maritime technologies until 2030, Maxim Kochetkov, the director of the department for for shipbuilding and maritime technologies at the Ministry of Industry and Trade told TASS.
The total cost of the vessels is assessed at around $91 billion, he said.
"The forecast program for shipbuilding suggests that 260 cargo ships and 15 cruise liners will be built from 2015 through 2030," Kochetkov said.
The Zvezda shipbuilding compound in the Far East, under construction now, will have a capability of building ships with water displacement of over 100,000 tonnes.
"The Zvezda compound in the Far East is a serious project requiring special attention and big spending," Kochetkov said. "When completed it will have the capacity for building high-tech ships, including the ones of the icebreaker class for operations in the Arctic areas. They will have water displacement of over 100,000 tonnes."
He admitted that the fleets servicing Russia's extensive systems of inland waterways stood in need of overhauls, too.
"An average ship in these fleets is 36 years old and 94.2% of all the existing ships were built twenty or more years ago," Kochetkov said.
As one of the major problems in this sphere, he mentioned the high cost of building the ships for inland waterways.
"A ship may cost up to $ 9.1 million and the average period of its recoupment may be as big ad fifteen to twenty years," Kochetkov said. "It's really difficult to guarantee long-term financing in a situation of this kind.
He pointed out a number of measures that had been taken to boost construction of ships of this type.
"The tendencies towards overhauling and building up the fleets became noticeable back in 2008," Kochetkov said. "We commissioned 119 vessels in various segments varying from towboats to auxiliary seacraft to passenger ships in the period of 2010 through 2014."
"We hope to continue increasing the volumes and getting shipowners interested in the construction of new ships at Russian shipyards, revamping the fleets and increasing the workforce employed in this sphere," he said.