Talks with defense ministry are in progress – USC

25.08.2011 Summarizing the talks about State Defense Order 2011 held at Russian Government on Aug 21, United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) estimates its stance more positively, reports RIA Novosti referring to USC press secretary Alexei Kravchenko.

It was earlier reported that a special inter-agency board was set to cope with problems of defense order placement at USC-controlled companies; the board includes representatives of Defense Ministry, Ministry of Trade and Industry, and United Shipbuilding Corporation.

"Having returned from the meeting at the government, USC president assessed our positions more positively than before. As we see, defense ministry does listen to our arguments", Kravchenko said.

As for him, on Aug 22 there was a perceptible progress in the defense order placement issue, particularly, in the area of delivery contracts between defense ministry and USC shipyards.

Alongside with that, commenting the information emerged in some media sources about a 2-day term for settlement of all disagreements, the interviewee said that the deadline is "impracticable". Kravchenko said he had no information that USC allegedly must submit justified product pricing to defense ministry within the 2-day period.

"We know nothing of this 2-day deadline and have already handed over several packages of documents to defense ministry; we justified prices and we see them adequate", he specified.

He pointed out that "there is no information about certain dates of contract signing so far". "As long as the talks go on constructively and the dialog is purposeful, we consider this as a progress and hope the process would finish in several weeks", underlined Kravchenko.