What do we trade besides oil and gas? Russia and high-tech exports

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The fifth column stubbornly repeats about a Russia-gas station, capable only of supplying "civilized" countries with oil, gas and other resources. What is the answer to Russophobes? How and what does Russia trade in addition to oil and gas? …

Let's go back to debunking the myths about bast shoe Russia and our lack of high-tech exports. What does Russia trade in besides oil and gas? Moreover, as we found out in the second part, the share of fuel and energy products with high added value is also high in this category. We will speak clearly and in an average way, without being tied to the past year that has not yet been calculated.

Discarding the "wooden plow", according to the figures of official statistics, we will see that the Russian export of machinery, equipment and vehicles has been stably in the region of $ 26-29 billion for several years. The lion's share in this section: nuclear reactors, boilers, equipment and mechanical devices; their parts.

As you can see, the world's first nuclear industry provides a good increase in exports. Nobody else is building 34 power units in 12 countries around the world. No not like this. It would be more accurate to say that no one else is building almost anything - neither Japan, nor the United States, nor France.

Ltd! Nuclear power is a whole different story! The pathetic efforts of the Americans in China have resulted in constant timing shifts, supply disruptions and multiplerise in the cost of the estimate. There, at first, the decrepit Uncle Sam pushed through a mega-deal, where it was a question of one hundred (!) AR-1000 reactors (1000 MW). But with the help of beautiful 3D presentations, a kind word and a pistol, we managed to persuade the Chinese comrades only for 4 reactors. With a pistol, because the Americans themselves assessed the 2006 contract as large diplomaticthe success of the entire Bush administration.

Then it turned out that there was no one to produce steel for the primary circuit pipelines; they had no one to produce volume expansion joints and steam generators; no one was able to manufacture the reactor vessel, as well as blanks for it and for steam generators. Here's a 3D roll, provide lawyers and managers, provide them with psychoanalysts, hairdressers, make-up artists and masseurs - as much as you want - and you are all with your pieces of iron. To me, too, criticize them, "the country from the plow" …

Then the Americans gave part of the contract to Mitsubishi, involved a couple of Italian companies, and redirected part to the Koreans. But let's be objective, six American companies were picking something there, pouring concrete and doing other things. True, one of them for some reason was called Siemens - well, after all, the plant is in the United States. In total, 12 contractors participated in the project, not counting Toshiba.

But, believe me, this figure is not the top of the circus. What the French arranged by acting as clowns in the Finnish arena exceeds it by two (!) Orders of magnitude. It is in Russia "from the plow" there is the state concern Rosatom, and all our nuclear power plants are designed, built and managed by state structures. Moreover, we somehow have everything in the old fashioned way, but in the old fashioned way, we have not yet grown to 3D and other virtual vparivanie. If you want to buy - come, look, feel - we sell only working and debugged ones.

The Americans were supposed to launch Chinese nuclear power plants in 2012, then in 2013, in 2014 … now they call it 2019. And what are the $ 1,200 per 1 kW? The last figure, which was filtered through clenched teeth by the Chinese from what was happening, was 3,900, but it was in 2011. Now it is unofficially believed that there will be at least 8,500!

The French, with their AREVA and Atomic Anna (Anne Lauvergeon) in Finland, had just as big a circus, if not a bigger one. Brief results - 2018 (and that, has not yet been launched) instead of 2009 and 8.5 billion euros instead of the initial 3.2 billion euros - is also not the limit.

You see, speaking in the language of Chinese natural philosophy, we have Planetary Winter in our yard and only large corporations tied to the state can survive and thrive, as this whole farce has clearly demonstrated to us.

But back to our Russian lambs. Also, more than a third of this announced export machine volume is occupied by electrical machines and equipment, sound equipment, television equipment; their parts. For two billion, turbojet and turboprop engines fly abroad. Trucks and cars worth about $ 1-1.5 billion.

The chemical industry, which not all countries can afford. On average, we trade on $ 20-25 billionThe main share in this export jackpot is mineral fertilizers. This product segment is broken down into its components as follows:

• Mineral fertilizers - 41.7%
• Organic chemical compounds - 21.3%
• Inorganic chemistry products - 18.2%
• Pharmaceutical products - 4.3%
• Essential oils and resinoids; perfumery, cosmetic, toilet products - 3.7%
• Soap, surfactants, detergents, lubricants, waxes, candles, pastes, plasticine - 3.3%
• Others - 7.5%

Further. The well-known products of the military-industrial complex. The most high-tech, high-quality, reliable. World brand. As they say in different parts of the world: “If you have a lot of money, you buy an American one. If not enough - used or Chinese. But if you are really going to fight, then only Russian. In this area, we have occupied our rightful second place in terms of sales for a long time, after the outgoing hegemon. On average, it goes to 14-17 billiondollars, but, in my opinion, this figure is significantly higher.

Not everything is on public display for political and some other reasons. These are just identified deliveries of the main types of conventional weapons according to the classification of the UN Register. Military experts are well aware that among the world's leading players, this "unrecorded" segment accounts for 3 to 5% of total exports. For Russia, this indicator is significantly higher, because in addition to the political component, this is due to the specifics of concluding contracts in the segment of supply of spare parts, service and repair.

Following. Metals and products from them - on $ 30-36 billionHere you have nickel, and aluminum, and copper. Get and process - factories, equipment, infrastructure, energy component, transport, research institutes and more. Whole regions and cities live on it.

Agriculture, which is experiencing an upsurge, and the entire agro-industrial complex (although it would be a stretch to carry fish there) - life-giving sanctions and a largely competent investment policy, various support programs, and the like. "God help" in the form of record harvests - apparently not only "General frost" is on our side. The result is obvious. Seventeenth year, export - 20.7 billion … dollars (an increase of 21.3% from the 16th or by $ 3.33 billion) - was considered an absolute record (the previous one was $ 19 billion in 2014)

But no! According to preliminary estimates, Russia increased exports of agricultural products in 2018 by 20%, to almost $ 25 billion … - space rates. A confident first place in the world in grain sales - 32,881 thousand tons in 2017 for 5.77 billion dollars. And regardless of the harvest (and it was still not bad this year, somewhere better, somewhere worse - the country is huge), the accumulated reserves allow us to keep leadership in this area.

By the way, so as not to get up twice, and since we are talking about our industry "from the plow" - Russia ranks fourth in the world in terms of industrial production as of 2017, overtaking Japan and Germany and second only to China, the USA and India. Here are the numbers for the first seven (billion dollars):

1. China: $ 9,082

2. United States: $ 3,860

3. India: $ 2,572

4. Russia: $ 1,340

5. Japan: $ 1,311

6. Indonesia: $ 1,295

7. Germany: $ 1,201.

There is one more area at our gas station, with a plow stuck in the middle, which I would like to talk about separately - the export of services. In various reports and diagrams it will either not be reflected to you, because they are "commodity", or they will be thrown into the gray zone of "other things."

The main types of international services include transport services, travel (travel services), communication and construction services, insurance and financial services, computer and information services, leasing fees, as well as other business services, services to individuals and services in the field of culture and recreation. education, medicine, government services, as well as other types of services that are not included in the listed ones. Here is a diagram for clarity, albeit not for this year:

In the "fattest" 13th year, this figure reached $ 70 billion. The ruble sank, and the volume of the industry in dollar terms also sank, although the volume of services itself decreased slightly. In the years 15-16, the indicator was at the level of $ 50 billion. In the 17th, it was already in the region of $ 55 billion. And here are the new figures from the Bank of Russia: in the first 6 months of last year, the Russian Federation sold services abroad for more than $ 30 billion. This is 14% more than in the same period a year earlier.

The most exported services were transport, tourism, construction and IT, which is not surprising with such a frenzied growth in tourism in both capitals and the past World Cup. And further in its summary, the regulator notes that the export of IT services in January-June 2018 for the first time exceeded imports. Sales volumes in value terms were $ 2.55 billion, while purchase volumes were $ 2.52 billion.

This is affected by the persistent promotion of ours abroad, and the program of import substitution with domestic software, which, by the way, is just gaining momentum. In the export of Russian software, we are confidently moving forward in such segments as game development, the Internet of things and mobile applications.

There are also such monsters as Paragon (utilities dealing with data on hard drives), Abbey (recognition system and electronic dictionaries), Spirit (software for transmitting video, voice and information), Prompt (automatic translation software), Parallels Acronics (recovery data, backup), Kaspersky Lab (antivirus software).

And there are not unfounded forecasts that by 2024 the IT market share in Russia's GDP may grow to 10% from the current 3-4%. After all, the volume of foreign sales of Russian software and services for its development in 2017 amounted to approximately $ 8.5 billion. Once again, for those in the "matrix tank". Russia sells its own IT for $ 8.5 billion abroad, and this figure is steadily growing from year to year. We are also building a "digital economy" in our country.

Thus, the share of the IT segment in the total export structure may grow up to 20%. We were, of course, half-pressed by the sanctions in America and somewhat constrained in Europe, and they account for 46% of all sales. Whereas developing countries account for only 7-8%. But the "third world" provides about 40% of the planetary spending on information and communication technologies (ICT) - this is where we grow and grow.

Such is the news of the "economy from the plow."

In the previous article, we drew attention to the dizzying growth of Russian exports by a quarter of their volume for the second year in a row and to a record positive trade balance in recent history. The increase by almost 20% of the total foreign trade turnover (up to $ 629 billion in 11 months of the past year) was also not ignored, which, of course, affected the record GDP of 103 trillion. rubles (almost 1.6 trillion dollars) and its growth by 2.3%.

“Yes, these are all petrodollars!”, - a friendly chorus from another reality will immediately be heard. Indeed, their share is high, but not as much as some are trying to declare. Their number in the total volume of the economy and its dependence on the volatility of oil prices is steadily decreasing every year.

If we take it in the export structure, then in 2017 the fuel and energy share was 59.2%. This is slightly more than in 2016 (58.1%), but significantly less than in any of the previous 11 years, when it ranged from 63 to 70.5%. In the first quarter of 2018, the figure was 61.7%. Here we will decompose it into its components: 61.7 = 27.4 + 12 + 3.6 + 18.7. The "petrodollars" themselves are here only by 27.4%. Yes, there is gas (12%) and coal (3.6%).

But the rest (18.7%) are products with high added value - gasoline, diesel, kerosene and so on. Our oil refineries are being built and modernized throughout the country, their products are sold for export like hot cakes, and the share of this component is steadily growing from year to year. All of this greatly affects European refineries, which have long been losing their previous profits due to low loading: the oil that used to be supplied to them for processing is now being processed in Russia.

Yes, all this energy component plays an important role in the structure of our budget. Here is a picture of At the Dawn of the Millennium:

It can be seen how they played an insignificant role in an openly weak budget, insignificant from the current position. Then, until 2003-2004, according to the schedule, the struggle for our national property is easily tracked. It can be seen how gradually up to 65% of the oil industry and 95% of the gas industry were nationalized, a moratorium was introduced on the use of an onerous production sharing agreement (PSA) and 265 (!) Different fields returned to us. A cumulative rent for the oil and gas industry was also introduced at about 84%.

I will not say anything about the fact that big business has finally deigned to pay taxes to the treasury in full, and what efforts were made for this. And then a breakthrough and rapid development. Should we be offered to abandon the goose that lays the golden eggs, which we returned with a fight? Because, you see, some, like a mantra, repeat: a gas station country? Shouldn't they go to … their virtuality!

Let's now call Britain a coal-producing country, when in the 19th century it was the largest supplier of coal in the world, and it supplied it, to a large extent, to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Moreover, we will declare that we have hooked them on the charcoal needle. But no, “the grandmother in the crown” is sacred in the liberal matrix paradigm, and none of them even thinks in this direction. Or maybe let's look back at the former hegemon, at this neo-liberal "city on the hill"? After all, they were the largest exporter of oil and its derivatives on the planet in the first half of the 20th century.

In the 1950s, half of all oil sold on world markets was of American origin. But no, in the minds immersed in virtuality, this is the standard of economic development, none of the matrix inhabitants will reproach the “sacred city on the hill” for the role that oil played in their economy and exports. Moreover, this is an aspect of geopolitical influence. The story of how OPEC gradually escaped from the tenacious, but already decrepit hands of Uncle Sam, and turned into OPEC +, into an instrument with a serious share of Russian influence, will be told to children.

Plus, as already noted, the role of oil and gas revenues in the federal budget is steadily declining. So, their receipts to the budget of the Russian Federation for 2011-2016. on average decreased annually by 162 billion rubles. (or by 3.1%), while non-oil and gas, on the contrary, increased on average annually by 580.4 billion rubles. (or 8, 6%), mainly due to income related to domestic production.

And do not forget that “oil and gas revenues” are not just crude oil and gas transported by tankers and pipes, as we discussed above regarding the export component. To oil and gas revenues, according to the Budget Code of the Russian Federation (BC RF) Art. 96.6 "Oil and gas revenues of the federal budget" includes income from the payment of:

1) tax on the extraction of minerals (MET) in the form of hydrocarbons;

2) export customs duties on crude oil;

3) export customs duties on natural gas;

4) export customs duties on goods produced from oil.

Where item 4 four takes a very significant share and is growing in monetary terms from year to year.

Further, driving another nail into the myth of the gas station, it is worth paying attention to one more number. In reality, mining in the structure of industry (the definition of "industry" - see OKVED-2 from Rosstandart) as of 2016 was only 35.9% (in actual prices), plus 52.3% - manufacturing, plus 11, 8% - production / distribution of electricity, gas and water.

The contribution of revenues from the export of fuel and energy products to Russia's GDP is generally minimal and fluctuates depending on the years and the calculation methodology from 8 to 15.5%.

And here is what the oil needle looks like according to the UN study:

Summing up, I would like to note that the government has declared an increase in non-energy exports by 1/5 in 2019 and the active implementation of national projects should contribute to this, which I personally have not the slightest doubt about.