Rustem Khamitov has taken the floor at the forum “Big Chemistry”

The President of Bashkortostan Rustem Khamitov has taken the floor before participants of the II international forum “Big Chemistry-2012”, held in Ufa today.

“It is especially important that Russia builds up priorities of long-term development of chemical industry’s development in the country” – he said – “We should determine our place and role in the global market and our goal is to stand in the Top10 of leading chemical states of the world. At the same time the situation we are found in is far from ideal. The world market of chemicals and oil products is specialized and monopolized. Now the center of this market recently shifts towards developing countries. The share of oil chemistry and chemistry in economic structures of these countries makes up dozens percents. Though Russia has solid reserves of raw materials, water and energy resources, it produces just about 2% of the global chemical output and 2% of oil products, having huge stocks of oil and gas and, sure, this situation can’t be called normal”.

Rustem Khamitov mentioned that for the last 20 years Russian chemistry faced serious systematic problems, resulted in lag of Russia by many dynamic indices of development.

“The average per capita consumption of production of chemical complex in the country is 5-6 times lower than the average world showings” – the President RB stated – “Import of oil-chemical products reached the scales, hampering economic security of the country, exceeding one trillion rubles annually, and this is almost a half of what is produced in the country. Further lag in production and consumption of chemicals can lead to the loss of competitiveness in defense industry, light industry and agriculture. The demand in polymers, plastic, paint-and-lacquer materials is going up. Many materials, used in defense industry, have no alternatives. Further development of electronics, pharmaceutics and agriculture is impossible without development of chemical industry, i.e. we have potentially huge internal market for such productions”.

The President RB has analyzed opportunities of Bashkortostan in development of oil-chemical branch.

“According to our calculations Bashkortostan would be able to increase its gross regional product by 250 billion rubles only due to its chemical complex. Today our gross regional product is equal to one trillion rubles, i.e. we can add one fourth to it due to development of our chemical industry. This is the quickest and the most efficient variant of development from the point of view of growth of the gross regional product. For that we have really powerful oil-chemical complex, consisting of such well-known enterprises as “UFANEFTEHIM”, Ufa Refinery, “NOVOIL”, “GASPROM NEFTEHIM SALAVAT”, “POLYEF”, “Soda”, “Caustic”, “Caoutchouc” and other plants. More than a half of all tax proceeds in the budget from processing productions fall on oil products and almost 10% - on chemical industry and the total share of tax revenues from oil-chemical enterprises is equal t0 20%. Our Republic holds the first place in Russia in production of soda ash, butyl and isobutyl alcohol, the second place in production of synthetic resin, the third - in production of caustic soda and plastics, but he main thing is that our chemical industry possesses high investment and innovational potential, we have qualified personnel and solid technological base. We have academic institutes and scientific centers. Having the largest industrial base for oil and gas processing, created for 60 years of oil-chemistry’s development, and adding the newest technologies to it we can build up modern highly efficient chemical and oil-chemical complex, able to compete quite successfully in Russia and foreign markets. But we have to solve several problems first. The first problem is removing of the shortage of raw materials. The biggest in the country processing chemical productions are concentrated in the regions of Volga federal district and we all know that these enterprises manufacture almost a half of Russian oil-chemical output. We mustn’t leave these productions without raw materials. That’s why the pipeline, which has to connect the main source of raw materials – Western Siberia with Volga regions, is so important. Today we signed the protocol of intent between Bashkortostan, Tatarstan and Yamal-Nenets autonomous district. Practically we intend to establish a consortium for designing a feasibility study and for beginning of works for construction of this pipeline. It will help us to remove the problem with raw materials supply for enterprises of Bashkortostan, Tatarstan and Samara region for 30-50 years. The second problem is technical rearmament and modernization of oil-chemical productions and implementation of innovational technologies and the third problem is attraction of serious investments. Without investments we won’t be able to solve any of the abovementioned problems and understanding it we create the atmosphere of openness and efficient system for protection of business in our Republic. New investment legislation works in the interests of investors. We try and form an integrated investment infrastructure here. Thus, our investment fund will make up about 400 million rubles in 2012, meant for realization of top priority projects. In 2011 we’ve reached almost 200 billion rubles of investments to the fixed capital of our enterprises but we have to enlarge this figure up to 250-300 billion rubles and, sure, we are working on this problem now”.