Meeting with Director General of Rosatom State Corporation Alexei Likhachev

Meeting with Director General of Rosatom State Corporation Alexei Likhachev

The President congratulated Alexei Likhachev on Nuclear Industry Worker’s Day and heard a report on the performance of the holding company. President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Likhachev, we have been marking Nuclear Industry Worker’s Day since September 28, 2005. I would like to congratulate you and everyone working in this vital, key industrial sector, which is achieving such impressive results. My congratulations to you. Director General of Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation Alexei Likhachev: Thank you very much. Vladimir Putin: Rosatom is, without a doubt, one of the world’s largest holdings, operating across the entire cycle, both in ensuring the country’s security and in the peaceful use of nuclear energy. We are currently building more nuclear power units abroad than any other country in the world, and we are doing so extremely well, using the latest technologies. And often, these are technologies that nobody else has apart from Rosatom. I know that the results are good, including the economic results; the technology is developing, and the prospects are good as well. As for the construction of nuclear power units within the Russian Federation, we have fulfilled all the plans we set ourselves. We have already exceeded 20 percent, having set ourselves the target of increasing the share of nuclear power generation in our energy mix from 16 percent to 20 percent. This plan has been fulfilled. The target has been achieved. I know that the company has other ambitious goals as well. Let us talk about all of this. Alexei Likhachev: Thank you very much, Mr President. Allow me, in my remarks, to add a little historical perspective. You chose September 28 as the date for Nuclear Industry Worker’s Day – a significant date marking the decision made on September 28, 1942, to launch work on uranium and put the nuclear issue back on the national agenda. It was only later that the Kurchatov Institute and the Ministry of Medium Machine Building were established, as part of the Soviet atomic project. But there is another date that is very important to Russia’s nuclear industry workers: December 1, 2007, when you made the decision on the Russian nuclear project and the establishment of the Rosatom State Corporation. We will be celebrating its 20th anniversary next year. We can roughly divide these 20 years into two parts. The first was about bringing the industry together, creating a management system and restoring all the competencies of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building. New competencies were also added to the agenda, including nuclear engineering, the full-cycle construction in Russia and abroad, and the nuclear icebreaker fleet. These were not part of the Soviet atomic project. We brought them into it. Of course, we must also mention the role of those who created the state corporation, primarily Sergei Kiriyenko, because they laid the foundation upon which the corporation developed over the next ten years, when it has grown several times over and acquired new qualities on the basis created in 2007. If you take a look at the figures, you will see that over the past ten years alone, our revenue in the public domain has grown fourfold, reaching more than 3 trillion rubles last year. Mr President, this figure does not include our revenue from state orders and state defence contracts. This is only our revenue in the open segment; otherwise, the figure would be higher. Over the past ten years, our revenue from new products and new areas of technological sovereignty has increased tenfold. This is certainly a big achievement. Frankly, we did not expect this. We anticipated considerable growth, but we have also achieved this result due to sanctions, which have made us stronger. Thank you for your assessment. We have truly achieved superiority over other global players, as demonstrated by the threefold growth of our foreign revenue in foreign currency terms. Another feature is the foothold for new ventures and projects associated with technological sovereignty, which encourage us to continue increasing our investment programme. It is one of the largest in the country at 1.7 trillion rubles. It is not simple to implement it in the current conditions, but we are doing everything possible to carry it out. We are also working to enhance efficiency and labour productivity. The average annual labour productivity at the corporation has grown by 11 percent, allowing us to increase wages by nearly 9 percent and social spending by 11 percent. These are the figures for the past few years. Vladimir Putin: You also pay more taxes. Alexei Likhachev: Yes, the figure has increased severalfold. Mr President, we will report higher figures this year. According to tentative results for the first nine months, our revenue has increased by 200 billion rubles in the public domain, by US$700 million from exports in foreign currency terms, and by 100 billion rubles from new products. We see a very strong five-year outlook and hope to reach a more ambitious figure of 5.5 trillion rubles in total revenue by 2030. More than half of this figure will be ensured by technological sovereignty projects. I would like to say a few words about our plans to enhance labour productivity. The national figure is 5 percent. Mr President, we have set the goal of increasing labour productivity by 12 percent a year, complemented with cost saving, as per your instructions. We plan to cut spending by 5 percent this year and by 3 percent a year in the next few years, with a cumulative increase of up to 15 percent by 2030. This will allow us to increase the profitability required to ensure the sustainable development of the industry, primarily competitiveness on the global market and our human resources capacity. To be continued.