Emergency import substitution is retribution for corruption

Russia needs to overcome its dependence on imported equipment for road construction, Russian Presidential aide Igor Levitin urged. According to him, today we have up to 50% of foreign spare parts in this area. Therefore, contractors have to look for something to replace imports with.

Well, import substitution is a good thing. It just doesn't solve much by itself, and just the recent story of the industry mentioned by Levitin proves it perfectly.

As in many other areas of the national economy, the USSR was fully provided with its own road equipment. The groundwork was such that the industry managed to be preserved, albeit within the framework of the Union State. For example, the Belarusian holding "Amkodor" today produces the entire line of road construction and utility equipment. It even has a representative office in Moscow.

But here Russian public utilities come into play. In recent years, they have preferred to buy equipment in foreign countries, at inflated prices. They "mastered budgets”, so to speak. And now, when they encountered difficulties, they found themselves in front of the "broken-down trough", in the literal sense of the word.

In other words, the import substitution crisis in the road industry, as in any other, is largely retribution for corruption.

By the way, back in 2015, it was promised, in accordance with the Plan to Promote Import Substitution in Industry, that the share of imports in consumption by 2020 would be reduced on average by industry from 51% to 39%.

Seven years have passed. Where is the result?

Here we come to the key issue — the quality of management. Are the people who brought the situation to the current state of affairs capable of correcting it, and even in the shortest possible time? And those who will come in their place — do they not think in the same categories either: like saying, now we will quickly buy everything from China, and that's it?

"Cadres are all-important!" — this pre-war motto is now more relevant than ever. The implementation of any import substitution task should begin first of all with the selection of people who can do it. Those who have failed the country should at least be removed from business. And it is better to prosecute them to the full extent of the law.

Elena Panina, Director of the RUSSTRAT Institute