Its responsibilities include the establishment of new production facilities, the distribution of orders among operating companies, the conduct of scientific activities through controlled institutes and the training of qualified personnel. After all, until 1991 there was a Ministry of Automobile Industry with a workforce of 500 people and a dozen industrial institutes! Now 17 to 20 people at the Ministry of Industry and Trade deal with the full range of issues in the automotive industry.
Mega great story
These generally banal considerations seriously agitated Oleg Moseev, the ex-president of ROAD, who held this position from 2016 to 2020 and has been acting vice president there since 2011. Here are excerpts from his outraged message to his successor:
– Let’s go point by point. Planning, production of cars and spare parts – this is us, first of all, in the Soviet Union. And secondly, we have the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and there is a department for the automotive industry and railway transport <…> Why is there still a need for a state-owned company? I have a question. Moreover, I do not understand at all how you can plan the production of cars and spare parts if these are non-state-owned enterprises, and even foreign companies, on which we rely, that is, Chinese companies. In addition, this organization must communicate with the government in general and the Ministry of Industry and Trade in particular on issues such as the distribution of orders and the establishment of new factories. This is generally the Soviet Union. Not only that, when the state starts to regulate something, it always ends up basically the same. In relations with the state, the state always wins, not private industry. For me, this is all a mega-great story, and I hope that all this will end nowhere…