The law provides for the initiation of auctions on licenses to mineral deposits. The manufactures criticize the bill because they believe it does not protect the domestic machine-building industry in their competition with foreign companies, DvinaInform reported. If the law is passed, the government will be unable to stimulate development of Russian machinery construction, the union maintains.

The industry also fears that the situation will be the same in the Barents Sea as in the Russia Far East, where foreign companies got almost all construction orders for the development of the Sakhalin offshore fields.