Russia on the verge of mass contractions in metallurgy and engineering

According to RIA, the New Region, the level of production is rapidly falling at the industrial enterprises of the Urals. General industrial production in the Chelyabinsk region - the main machine -building and metallurgical region of the Urals - in 2013 will be less than 97 percent of the 2012 indicator.

"In the industrial sector, revenue and profit falls significantly, social costs become tangible," the newspaper writes.

According to the Chelyabinsk branch of the Association of Employers "Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs", employees of some South Ural enterprises were transferred to an incomplete working week, and next year the companies will have to begin to reduce their staff.

The meeting of the head of the Russian government, Dmitry Medvedev, who has recently passed behind closed doors, indirectly proves that the situation in the industry is critical. The meager scraps of information voiced by the deputy prime ministers Shuvalov and Dvorkovich indicate that the Russian authorities “gave the go-ahead” for mass dismissals and allowed the use of budget money for this.

“For these purposes, we reserved about 200 billion rubles in the budget for 2014,” said Igor Shuvalov. Money will be used to "re -study of workers, support moving to a new place of work and providing grants for those who decided to start their job," he stated.