Private business will be called to serve – Newspaper Kommersant No. 217 (7418) dated 11/23/2022

The targets for the supply of equipment, materiel and weapons for the army have been prepared and have begun to be fulfilled, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said yesterday at a meeting of the Coordinating Council for meeting the needs of the Armed Forces. The authorities intend to more actively involve private business, including small businesses, in future supply chains. At the same time, the “counter-sanctions” practice of purchasing products from a single supplier is being scaled up – the government has approved a list of departments, mainly security agencies, that can purchase products for the needs of a military operation, bypassing competitive procedures.

The Coordinating Council for Meeting the Needs of the Armed Forces has completed the preparation of targets for the supply of weapons, equipment and materiel. As Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said yesterday at a meeting of the council, the plans have been approved and accepted for execution. According to him, all involved departments will have to monitor “the relevance of production plans, clarify and correct them in time, taking into account incoming applications.”

In order to meet the supply targets, the council needs to decide how to purchase the necessary products. The prime minister urged to “more actively involve” in the work on the supply of material and technical means a larger number of private, civil enterprises, including representatives of small and medium-sized businesses. He explained that only a part of the required products is “closed” and produced at specialized enterprises. The rest, for example, uniforms and personal protective equipment, may well be supplied by private companies after bringing to them the technical specifications and design documentation.

It should be noted that a possible more active involvement of business in aircraft deliveries will occur against the background of a decrease in the activity of its participation in public procurement. Based on the results of the three quarters of 2022, there was a trend towards a decrease in the number of suppliers participating in the procurement of the state and state-owned companies, this was due both to problems with logistics and settlements, and due to the inability to guarantee the fulfillment of obligations at a fixed price in the face of uncertainty (see . “Kommersant” dated October 10).

It is obvious that the required inclusion of private companies in the supply chain for the needs of the Armed Forces entails their participation in the centralized coordination of production processes – after all, as previously mentioned, for each item in the supply nomenclature, its own schedule is formed, with which enterprises must be familiarized and which can cover the entire production chain, providing raw materials and components.

It is also clear that the opportunities for business to participate in deliveries within the framework of the plans of the Coordinating Council will be limited both by the secrecy of products and by the departmental affiliation of the state order. Yesterday, the prime minister announced the approval of the list of departments that can purchase the necessary goods for the needs of the army from a single supplier. We are talking about mainly power structures: in the list of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the FSO, the SVR, the Federal Penitentiary Service, the Russian Guard, as well as the Federal Reserve (management of state material reserves, which are used to support industries in case of violations in the supply of critical resources) and the Main Directorate of Special programs of the President of Russia (provides, among other things, the execution of the powers of the President in the field of mobilization).

Earlier, until the end of 2023, the federal government and the regions extended the opportunity to establish additional cases of purchasing goods or services from a single supplier, as well as to determine departments that can conduct purchases without competitive selection of a supplier, concluding a government contract directly with one or another organization. The resulting increase in non-competitive purchases from a single supplier is already noticeable (see Kommersant of September 23). As Mikhail Mishustin explained yesterday, such an approach makes it possible, in particular, “to quickly acquire ammunition and other goods, and quickly repair equipment.”

Evgenia Kryuchkova