MOSCOW. Jan 13 (Interfax-AVN) - Several enterprises of the Russian defense industry will go through additional privatization as intellectual property was not taken into account in most of initial privatization cases, Minister of Industry, Science and Technologies Ilya Klebanov said in an interview with the Expert magazine published on Monday.
"I think the state made a great mistake by not evaluating its intellectual property during the privatization of defense industry enterprises. In fact, it ceased to become the owner of rights to developments that were funded by the state and always belonged to the state. It took its property out of its pocket and said, "Anyone may have it for free." This is not correct. That is why, I think, we will get the approval of the president and prime minister in January and set up a working group including officials of the Justice Ministry, State Property Ministry, Ministry of Industry, Science and Technologies, Ministry of Economic Development and other agencies. The group will work out a document containing clear indication of what the state will do with its intellectual property during the establishment of integrated defense industry enterprises. It is my firm belief that the property must be returned to the state," Klebanov said.
This does not mean nationalization of the defense industry, he explained.
"I would choose a different term, additional privatization. In cooperation with the State Property Ministry and independent experts, we have analyzed the situation at several private defense industry enterprises and found out that all their capital, tools, realty, etc. amount to only 10-15 percent of the enterprises' value taking into account intellectual property. It turns out that the defense industry was sold dirt cheap," the minister said.
According to him, justice will be restored in the process of additional privatization, and the state will become a prominent shareholder in Russian defense industry enterprises.
"This will be our next step in the defense industry reform," Klebanov said.
He did not agree with the statements that the defense industry reform is going nowhere.
"In addition to the air defense consortium, we have recently set up the Vysokotochnoye Oruzhiye (Precision-Guided Weapons) holding company. In general, 21 projects are at various stages of coordination. Of course, not everything is progressing as quickly as we would like to. But you must understand that the state started to reform a giant industry with sense for the first time in the post-Soviet history, and it does not have many resources. We cannot afford unreasoned risk, the price of a mistake is very high," Klebanov concluded.