Export will be supported by bulk carriers – Newspaper Kommersant No. 38 (7483) dated 03/06/2023

As Kommersant found out, the program of state subsidies for the purchase of a fleet for foreign trade operations can be extended until 2034 to 85 ships, most of which are bulk carriers, including Capesize. It is expected that banks will allocate more than 150 billion rubles for these purposes, of which the government will subsidize about 70 billion rubles, including 24 billion rubles in the next two years. At the same time, there are almost no oil tankers in the program. According to analysts, the need for ships to transport oil has already been covered by the “shadow fleet”.

The program of state subsidies for loans for the purchase of a fleet for export-import operations of the Russian Federation can be extended to 85 ships worth a total of 150 billion rubles, a source familiar with the discussion of the project told Kommersant. We are talking about ships of various types and sizes, both used and under construction – primarily 60 bulk carriers, including 12 Capesize. Also, seven to nine container ships and seven multi-purpose ships are applying for subsidies. There are also tankers in the program, says the interlocutor of Kommersant, 15 units of a class not higher than Aframax (there are eight of them), intended for unspecified types of cargo. One source insists that oil tankers are not included in the program.

The government has been developing a program to support the purchase of ships since 2022 (see Kommersant dated November 10, 2022). We are talking about subsidizing the rate on loans for banks that will finance the purchase and charter of ships to service Russian export-import flows.

Unlike other programs that encourage the construction of ships at Russian shipyards, these subsidies should be extended to the purchase of products from foreign shipyards and the fleet in the secondary market. The foreign trade turnover of Russian ports is mostly served by ships not controlled by Russian companies – they (in units of ships) accounted for about 70% of export-import cargo turnover in 2022.

Subsidies, according to the document, should allow banks to provide soft loans at a rate of 4%. The state subsidizes up to 9 percentage points of the commercial rate (the key rate of the Central Bank plus 3 percentage points). Previously, it was planned to provide a subsidy on the condition that the cost of export-import cargo turnover from the Russian Federation for a purchased vessel is at least 100% of the subsidy amount.

Now, a source familiar with the January version of the document tells Kommersant, in order to receive a subsidy, the volume of cargo transported as part of foreign economic activity must be at least 50% of the total volume of cargo transported in the reporting period.

Different interlocutors of Kommersant talk about different amounts of funding for the program. One reports that in 2023-2024 it is planned to allocate 24.3 billion rubles for it. from the Government Reserve Fund (11 billion rubles in 2023 and 13 billion rubles in 2024), and then until 2034 to finance it at the expense of the state program “Development of the transport system”, which for these purposes will be increased by about 46 billion rubles. Another interlocutor of Kommersant says that we are talking about 5 billion rubles. in 2023 and 30 billion rubles. in 2024. The Ministry of Finance told Kommersant that “at the moment, the issue of the number of ships and sources of funding for this program is being worked out jointly with the Ministry of Transport.” The Ministry of Transport did not respond to a request.

FESCO said that they support measures to subsidize the purchase of ships and are interested in acquiring them on terms of a preferential credit rate, but the final decision on participation will depend on the parameters of the program.

The interest was also confirmed in the Delo group. “The development of our own fleet in the basins of presence will ensure stable and high-quality satisfaction of the needs of several thousand of our customers in export-import transportation, which is especially important against the backdrop of the departure of many international shipping companies,” they say. “We are interested in acquiring about 30 container and multi-purpose vessels over the horizon of several years. Potential bulk carrier customers declined to comment.

Russia did not really have its own sea bulk carriers, says Mikhail Burmistrov, head of Infoline-Analytics, and in this case the program is definitely needed, unlike the situation with tankers. Now Russian coal companies, which already own ports and terminals, are very interested in the complex alignment of logistics, especially when it comes to extra-long routes from the North-West to Asia. Bulk carriers for grain cargo are also in demand now.

With oil tankers due to the formation of a sufficient shadow fleet, the problem was somehow solved, the expert believes, admitting that they could not get into the program, since oil companies have sufficient financial resources to solve this problem on their own. The Russian shipbuilding industry will not be able to participate in this program, he concludes, because it is not ready for this.

Natalya Skorlygina, Tatiana Dyatel