Rustem Khamitov has taken the floor at the IV international forum “RUSNANOTECH-2011”

On October 27 the President of Bashkortostan Rustem Khamitov has paid a visit to the IV international forum “RUSNANOTECH-2011” in Moscow. The public affairs service of the President RB reports Rustem Khamitov has taken part in the discussion re “How one can provide innovational breakthrough in regional economics?”.

“What does Bashkortostan represent? A big Republic with high volumes of industrial production, found in the Top 10 of Russian regions. At the same time I can say that for the last several years Bashkortostan failed to represent the model of innovational policy because of many reasons. The main focus was laid on the traditional branches – oil mining, oil refining and oil chemistry. All this richness gives the inflow of taxes for the sum of about 310-320 billion rubles. A half of this money is left in the Republic and another half is transferred to the federal center. Almost 90% of the first half are social expenses, wages of pedagogues, medics, budget sphere etc. It means that even in such big and powerful republic as Bashkortostan we can afford to spend just 10% for solution of some innovational and infrastructural problems” - Rustem Khamitov said.

“What should we do? There are just few receipts but it is clear that we begin working with the owners of big enterprises but as the President of Bashkortostan I can say that there were no real shifts in this direction for the last one year and a half. The owners aren't interested in innovations because the demand in their output remains high and we have no interest to create these points of growth” - Rustem Khamitov complained.

“As for the federal center, the beginnings of some big innovational companies just start penetrating into our territory – such as “ROSNANO”, for example. We've signed the agreement with the President of “ROSNANO” Anatole Chubais and settled that by 2015 the volumes of innovational output will increase up to 90 billion rubles – approximately 10 times more than we have now. Only four years is left but we have to complete very big volume of works. Is it real? I think yes but it will be hard work. But this is just the only example, when a big innovational structure comes to our territory and we have to invent the rest by ourselves” - the President RB underscored.

“As for oil refining and oil chemistry, we have to remember that today these branches belong to the big Moscow companies and we can't really influence upon their policy there, so we have to do some things self-dependently. We chose the technologies, which could be called innovational - about seven such technologies. Here we are the leaders in Russian Federation, for example in sphere of intense plastic deformation. Same can be said about welding, multiaxis metal working and electrical-physical-chemical metal working – this is a new sort of lathes, able to manufacture the details of any configuration with the highest level of accuracy, the technologies of vacuum coatings, ion-vacuum and laser coatings, powder metallurgy – all these branches have nothing to do with oil, oil refining and oil chemistry” - the President RB mentioned.

“Machine building is the branch, what should become the base of our life, because I understand that if we have no machine building, we have no country. Jointly with the company “RUSHYDRO” we opened a techno-park and invested two billion rubles each to it, i.e. 4 billion rubles. Now we start the project on establishment of the techno-park for energy-efficient technologies. As I said, we collect these technologies on one site, thus creating the center of nano-competence.. It means that any big machine-building enterprise, manufacturing aviation engines, lathes and equipment for oil refineries, can order some products here. Let's take our Ufa Engine Plant (UMPO) – the biggest engine plant in Russia and the only alive, working with profit as an example. All other plants died (including the plants in Omsk and Moscow). Today we are number one in Russia in production of aviation engines for the fighters “SU” and “MIG”.

For production of aviation engines the plant produces about 30 thousand types of details, i.e. the plant produces these details on its own site from zero. What productivity in such case we can tell about? We offer to establish a center at this enterprise, which would accompany production of aviation engines here, at that not only in Ufa but all over Russia. The market of such services only in Bashkiria can be estimated at 8-9 billion rubles annually. This is the example how one can find the variants of alternative solutions in such mono-profiled Republic as Bashkortostan” - Rustem Khamitov stated.