Mintimer Shaimiev: Lobbyism should not be justified

-Unfortunately, it is true. Not today’s developments of our aircraft industry but yesterday’s are being presented at this exhibition. It leaves me with very hard feelings in my heart especially when you listen to people who are directly linked with this sphere. I mean heads of state scientific centres.

Today, many people mention as an example the experience of Brazil’s Embraer plane manufacturer. Brazilians managed to organize manufacture of competitive planes and it is praiseworthy. But Brazil completes planes owing to supplies from all over the world, so development of technologies is a prerogative of source countries. For Russia, with its potential, such approach cannot be acceptable and we cannot depend on side suppliers.

A bright example is the only project in civil aviation that is being realised by Russianaviation corporation Sukhoi, who manufactures the medium-range RRJ airplanes with participation of a number of Western companies. Sanctions imposed by the US against this company have put its realisation under a question. For last three-four years this project was lobbied and the others were ignored or stopped.

Unruly lobbyism existing in aviation companies and industry during last decades have almost killed Russian aircraft construction and today we are unable to go on without purchasing foreign airplanes. We have been attempting to attract attention to this problem but the public mind was impregnated with an idea that home aviation industry was incapable to produce anything usable and competitive. As a result, lobbyists can celebrate victory, they have almost reached their victory.

At the same time, the situation is catastrophic but not absolutely hopeless. Not everything is lost and it is necessary to show the political will at the state level and to allocate not conditional but sufficient funds for reviving home aircraft construction. This is the protection of state interests, and we don’t have the right to lose the locomotive of high technologies for all times. The aircraft construction is such a kind of the locomotive.