OREANDA-NEWS. August 26, 2009. Putin's introductory remarks: Good afternoon, colleagues,
Today, we will analyse progress in restructuring our missile and space industry.

Let me recall that our strategic goals in this respect are to make the domestic space industry more competitive, and to more effectively use its potential both for resolving domestic socio-economic tasks, and for entering high-tech international markets. Obviously, we should not forget the industry's role in our defence capability. Defence-related projects amount to 63% of what is being done in the missile and space industry.

Recently, a number of decisions have been made to improve the management of the missile and space complex. The organisation of integrated structures is now underway.

These decisions aim at preserving and expanding the current scientific and technological groundwork, stepping up the industry's technical modernization, and attracting qualified specialists, including young people, to successful companies.

Despite certain economic difficulties, we have kept our space projects on the budget priority list. This year alone almost 82 billion roubles have been appropriated for these projects under three federal programmes. Let me specify that these allocations amount to 58.2 billion roubles under the Federal Space Programme, another 15.3 billion roubles under the federal targeted programme GLONASS Global Navigation System, and yet another 8.2 billion roubles under the federal targeted programme on developing Russia's defence and industrial complex in 2007-2010 and beyond. Thus, the total is 81.7 billion roubles.

The Government has adopted a number of anti-crisis measures to stabilise the financial position of the industry's individual companies. I am referring to additional capitalisation, and the granting of state guarantees and subsidies. A total of eight billion roubles have been allotted to the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Centre, and state guarantees worth three billion roubles have been granted to the Energomash Joint Stock Company. The Government has also made decisions on granting subsidies to a number of other organisations of this industry.

I believe we have every opportunity to expedite the streamlining of the industry's technological and experimental foundation, and to enhance the effectiveness of corporate management. It is also necessary to dispose of the burden of non-core assets and infrastructure facilities.

As agreed, the resources must be focused on the following promising directions - piloted space flights, manufacture of space vehicles and carrier rockets, and services to transport payloads into orbit.

As for specific projects, we must pay special attention to the Angara family of carrier rockets with all its derivatives, and the development of entirely new satellites for navigation, communication, remote Earth probing, and weather detection.

Now I would also like to say a few words about the industry's future structure. The complexes, which are currently being integrated, should subsequently be united into a few major holding corporations. They will enjoy considerable economic independence and freedom in decision-making, and will be worthy representatives of our country on the international market.

Currently, Roskosmos (Federal Space Agency) is conducting a large-scale reorganisation of our entire missile and space industry but this process is proceeding slowly. Today, only four enterprises have been set up and are operating as fully integrated agencies - the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Centre, the Energomash Research and Production Centre, the Progress State Research and Production Space Centre (also known as TsSKB-Progress), and the N.A. Pilyugin Automation and Instrumentation Research and Production Centre. Others are lagging behind in preparing for the required institutional procedures.

Today, I would like to hear about the reasons for these delays. I'm instructing Rosimushchestvo (Federal Agency for State Property Management) and Roskosmos to guarantee the strict implementation of our previous decisions.

Additionally, the Government's Military-Industrial Commission should establish strict control over compliance with the schedule for establishing integrated agencies in the missile and space industry.

Again, we will certainly continue our direction on reorganising the missile and space industry.

In turn, I would expect the heads of Roskosmos and the directors of industry enterprises to conduct a thorough and responsible management policy.