Creating unequal conditions for state and private enterprises and manual regulation of economic processes will have negative consequences for the defense market.

This was stated by Vladyslav Belbas, director general of Ukrainian Armor LLC, in an interview with Serhiy Zgurts on Espresso TV channel.

“Capitalism cannot be built by socialist methods. Excessive regulation, manual control of economic processes will lead to the fact that sooner or later such economic systems and production will not be viable. We understand that the production of weapons and military equipment is not regulated by open trade, but is an instrument of power and politics. But we see that countries with free economies, where private enterprises are the main contractors of defense customers, have the most developed defense industry,” Belbas said.

According to him, the ammunition market is an illustration of this inequality.

“Understanding the importance of ammunition production for the Ukrainian Defense Forces, a number of private companies have mastered the relevant competencies from scratch. However, none of the private production facilities received any funding from the state to launch their capacities. At the same time, state-owned companies receive significant investments in fixed assets, purchase of production lines, and so on. As a result, private producers offer the same unit price without any government assistance as companies that receive significant investments from the budget to organize production,” said the director general of Ukrainian Armor.

In his opinion, there is currently no understanding of the value of private defense business, although it is private enterprises that pay much more taxes to the budget and it is in private business that “the economic strength of developed countries is found.”