Kremlin wants to rid Russia of imported electronics
The Russian government has confirmed its strategy to make the country a “global leader” in the electronics industry by 2030.
According to the document, which was signed on January 17 by recently appointed Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and published on the Cabinet of Minister’s website on Wednesday, domestic electronics should account for 60% of Russia’s electronics market in 10 years’ time.
This will involve a broad range of products, from integrated chips and processors to cellphones, TVs and radios. The electronic product strategy pertains to electronic components and interconnected system devices, electronic appliances and special purpose systems, as well as professional and consumer electronics, including radio-electronics.
According to the strategy, Russia needs to triple its electronic production, from 1.87 to 5.22 trillion rubles (around $30.2 to $84.4 billion), and grow the civilian product share from 50.3% to 87.9%.
There are currently 1,600-1,700 electronics companies operating in the country. Of these, the 422 state-owned enterprises provide 55% of the sector’s profit. There are also 1,200 organizations with private capital (23% of the profit) and 30 foreign companies (22%).
However, the proportion of domestically produced electronics on the market is only 31%, even taking into account the defense industry.
The government plans to put an end to this in three stages. First, in 2020-2021, Russian products will be promoted within the country, primarily through national projects. Then, in 2022-2025, there will be a movement towards international markets, possibly involving foreign partners. In the third and final stage, the plan is to attain “leading sector positions in prospective markets and global technological leadership” by tripling exports to $12 billion per annum.
Over the course of the next 10 years, the Russian industry will need to learn to produce processors, controllers, memory, including the component basis of silicon technologies with topological standards of 65-45 nm, 28 nm, 14-12 nm, 7-5 nm; to master the production of OLED displays no lower than 6th generation with resolutions of up to 2048x2048 pixels, and to learn to put displays on 200mm diameter plates, as well as semiconductor lasers.
There are plans to build a “silicon factory” for producing digital integrated microchips, microwave electronics and software, including encryption technologies.
The industry is currently suffering from a shortage of new staff. The average age of employees is 45-50 years. In order to change this, there are plans to “improve the attractiveness of the sector to professional personnel and young talent”. The training of specialists will also be done domestically in order to ensure that “Russian development is implemented in the training and retraining processes”.