Moscow: Russia’s top arms exporter said Thursday its sales last year grew 10 percent despite the economic crisis, as it looked to add new clients like Saudi Arabia, Libya and possibly even Afghanistan.
The export sales of state-owned arms exporter Rosoboronexport amounted to 7.4 billion dollars (5.2 billion euros) in 2009, up 10 percent on the previous year, the company’s head Anatoly Isaikin said.
“This is a figure that allows us to look with optimism into the future,” he told reporters, noting that the crisis failed to make a dent in Russia’s overseas arms sales.
Total Russian arms sales were set to top 8.5 billion dollars in 2009, Mikhail Dmitriyev, head of the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation, said last month, citing preliminary estimates.
Rosoboronexport is the leading but not the only exporter of Russian-made weapons.
Isaikin said that as of today Rosoboronexport boasted an order book amounting to 34 billion dollars, including contracts worth 15 billion dollars from last year.
Dmitry Vasilyev, an analyst with the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said Russian arms sales could be even more significant, were it not for the domestic industry’s inability to keep up with “rather high demand” for Russian arms.
He praised the arms exporter’s current order book, saying that “if there was a breakthrough it was in contracts.”
The United States is the world’s largest arms exporter, followed by several countries, including Russia, Britain and France.
Moscow’s traditional arms customers have been India, China, Algeria and Malaysia, with Venezuela and Syria becoming more recent clients.
Aircraft account for half of all arms exports.
Rosoboronexport is looking to add a number of new clients like Saudi Arabia and Libya as well as NATO member countries, Isaikin said, declining to more specific.
“Currently intensive talks on supplies of all kinds of weapons are under way” with Libya, a Soviet-era client, Isaikin said, adding he hoped the prospect of weapons sales to Saudi Arabia were also “good.”
On Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov discussed possible arms sales with his Libyan counterpart Abu Bakr Younis Jaber but officials did not say whether any firm agreements were in the pipeline.
Russian media reported earlier this week Libya was seeking to buy more than two billion dollars worth of Russian arms including 20 fighter planes.
Asked whether any deals could be signed during the Libyan delegation’s current visit, Isaikin told AFP the talks were “still continuing.”
Officials from Iraq and Afghanistan have also approached the Russians with a view to buying weapons but it would be up to the US administration to determine whether any such deals with Moscow could be possible, Isaikin added.
He reiterated Russia’s traditional stance that Moscow saw no “obstacle” to arms sales to Iran.
He declined however to disclose any new details on Russia’s controversial accord to sell Iran sophisticated S-300 air defence systems, which have yet to be delivered in a deal that alarmed the United States and Israel.
Rosoboronexport, Isaikin said, detected keen interest from foreign countries in the S-400, Russia’s latest generation of air defense missile systems, and “there are a lot of preliminary talks.”
However, the weapons would first be supplied to the country’s own army, while selling it overseas would be a matter of “distant future”, he said.
