Vladimir Putin thanked the members of the plant’s workers’ committee for their support during the presidential election campaign.
The President informed the workers that a contract has been signed between the Russian Defence Ministry and the plant for the next three years. In addition, Vladimir Putin announced that the federal targeted programme The Development of the Defence Industry of the Russian Federation for 2011–2020 stipulates the modernisation of a large part of the plant’s facilities in 2012–2014.
Uralvagonzavod was founded in 1936 and has for many years held leading positions in freight railway engineering and the defence industry. During the Great Patriotic War the plant manufactured the T-34 tanks. At present, Uralvagonzavod consists of over 20 engineering companies and research and design offices in five federal districts of Russia. The company’s main products include armoured vehicles, railway cars and mobile drilling rigs.
* * *
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon,
I want to thank all of you for your proactive approach and for your support. You know, all these political battles are followed by a period of humdrum work that is actually of great importance: we must perform and show real results. This equally applies to me, the future Government, the Governor, the Plenipotentiary Envoy and all of you.
”All political battles are followed by a period of humdrum work that is actually of great importance: we must perform and show real results. This equally applies to me, the future Government, the Governor, the Plenipotentiary Envoy and all of you.“
We are now going to address some of the plant’s problems. We will hold a meeting on the development of the defence industry in general and the future of the plant.
As you probably know, a contract was signed two days ago between the Defence Ministry and the plant for a large amount of work, which will keep the defence part of the plant busy for three years. This contract is for a total of 6 billion rubles. This year it will bring about a billion. The car-building part (the plant is split 50–50 into defence and car-building parts) will have approximately the same amount. In addition, it is very important that the plant’s executives and the federal programme (we have a federal targeted programme for the development of the defence industry) have also provided funding for the plant’s modernisation. So we are no longer talking about orders anymore but the modernisation of the plant. The federal targeted programme will provide around 6.2 billion rubles over three years: in 2012, 2013 and 2014. This year 1.1 billion will be spent just on upgrading the equipment.
So we are going to discuss all these issues today, and I hope and am certain that we will continue working together on developing the plant, on improving the morale, on increasing salaries, making your jobs more interesting and improving your future prospects.
There is another aspect that is not directly related to the plant: we will talk about the city of Nizhny Tagil. This is a separate issue. On the way here last night, Igor [Kholmanskikh] pointed out that the city has a lot of unresolved problems. Again, this is not related to the company, to the plant, but it has to do with financial cooperation between the region and the city. If the need arises, we will provide help from the federal budget. The main thing is to build efficient cooperation between the region and the city of Nizhny Tagil.
As the Governor just said, we must build the infrastructure, improve transportation between Nizhny Tagil and Yekaterinburg and the road network in Nizhny Tagil. These are the matters we will talk about today. Thank you all once again.
<…>