MOSCOW, April 15 (RIA Novosti) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev criticized on Monday the government’s failure to meet the deadline today for placing contracts for the State Defense Order this year.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who is in charge of the defense industry, said only 67.5 percent of government defense contracts have so far been concluded, up 3.2 percent on last year.
“Two-thirds is not a good result,” Medvedev said at a meeting with his deputy prime ministers.
“This means there are mistakes both in planning and in contract placement,” he said.
Monday is the deadline for the signing of defense procurement contracts for the current year, he said. This includes R&D projects, delivery of arms and military equipment, scrapping of decommissioned weapon systems and disposal of chemical weapons, he added.
Wrangling over contract prices between the Defense Ministry and defense firms in 2011 jeopardized that year's state defense order, then-Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said at the time.
Russia's major 2011-2020 arms procurement program stipulates the upgrade of up to 11 percent of its military equipment annually, boosting the proportion of modern weaponry in the armed forces to 70 percent by 2020. Russia has earmarked about 908 billion rubles (just under $30 billion) for state defense spending in 2012.
Last Monday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu criticized as totally unacceptable the existing practice of 100 percent prepayment for state defense contracts.
Paying up front leads to loss of control over defense orders on the part of the state's contracting authorities, resulting in unfinished construction projects, time overruns, and incomplete deliveries of arms and military equipment, he said.
Russia's Defense Ministry has recently begun ordering foreign-made defense equipment for the first time in its post-Soviet history, in apparent dissatisfaction with the performance of domestic producers.
