Rosoboronexport's sales reach $6.5 bln in H1
MOSCOW. Aug 15 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian state arms export agency Rosoboronexport has been expanding its presence on world markets, increasing its contract portfolio, optimizing its management structure, and reducing costs from year to year, which enabled it to increase its sales in the first half of 2013 to $6.5 billion, the Rostec state corporation reported in a statement on Thursday.
"While Rosoboronexport's sales were slightly over $5 billion in 2003, they reached a record of $12.9 billion in 2012. Rosoboronexport is determined to increase the sales in 2013. In the first six months alone, the exports amounted to $.6.5 billion," it said.
The company's contract portfolio exceeds $35 billion now, and foreign customers are also considering draft contracts whose worth totals approximately $20 billion, it said.
"In order to improve the quality and intensity of after-sale servicing of military products, Rostec has come up with the idea of delegating the right to work directly with foreign customers purchasing military hardware to the leading organizations of Rostec's holding companies," it said.
Rosoboronexport is a state agency mediating in exports and imports of the entire spectrum of military and dual-purpose finished products, services and technologies and is incorporated in Rostec. Rosoboronexport is one of the leading companies on the global weapons market, accounting for over 80% of Russian exports of weapons and military hardware. It ships its products to about 70 countries and cooperates with over 700 Russian defense industry companies.
Rostec, formerly known as Russian Technologies, is a state corporation set up in 2007 to promote the development, production and exports of civilian and military high technology products. It incorporates 663 organizations currently combined into 8 military-industrial and 5 civilian companies. Rostec organizations are located in 60 regions of Russia and export their products to more than 70 countries. Rostec's revenues in 2012 amounted to 931 billion rubles, with net profit of 38.5 billion rubles, and the taxes the corporation paid to the budgets of all levels exceeded 109 billion rubles.