Sergey Boltramovich, Grigory Dudarev, and Vladimir Gorelov ... - Etla

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sharp decrease in government orders and low competitiveness of its
products on the world market. Due to that metal-working also experienced
deep recession. On the other hand, the metallurgy enterprises,
to a large extent oriented at primary metal products, made the most of
the new opportunities to take the lead in the cluster. As a result, the
slump in production experienced by the metallurgy was relatively
small, compared to other Russian industries.
Table 3.1
Ferrous Metallurgy Output in Northwest Russia in
1990-2000, Thousand Tons
1990 1996 1998 1999 2000
Iron ore 20,998 12,417 13,792 14,527 14,153
Steel 13,342 9,510 9,110 9,680 10,222
Rolled metal 10,922 7,778 7,730 8,196 8,662
Coated sheet and plate 284 456 466 469 468
Steel shapes (high accuracy) 70.5 19.9 22.1 19.1 26.5
Steel pipes 406 168 189 229 283
Wares of special types of steel 107 42.3 48.7 55.8 79.3
Source: Goskomstat (Russian State Committee for Statistics), 2001
Favourable conditions for exports after the financial crisis of the
August 1998 promoted the growth of metallurgy sector, and at present
production volumes by many positions are not far from those achieved
before the Transition period. However, the current situation in the sector
is not stable due to increased dependency on world market conditions
and political issues. The slow growth of the main metalconsuming
industries (heavy machine building, construction) noted
during the last few years cannot as yet substantially expand the domestic
market for the companies of the cluster.
During the transition period metal sector has undergone sweeping
privatisation. Presently, property redistribution is still continuing, the
business is characterised by low transparency, and a large number of
shadow and criminal operations take place.
Territorial and production gap between metallurgy and metalworking
inherited from the Soviet period still exists. Metal-working still
combines with machine-building, and often occupies leading positions
in export volumes of large machine-building companies owing to
higher export potential.