Illegal cigarettes “captured” the Russian market: how not to run into a fake

by time news

The share of counterfeit tobacco has grown by almost 20% in three months

Smuggled cigarettes have flooded the Russian market. According to the analytical agency Kantar TNS, the volume of illegal tobacco has grown by 20% since this spring. The main supplier, according to them, is Belarus, and the share of cigarettes from Kazakhstan, which at some point almost disappeared, increased almost 3 times. What led to the growth of the shadow market and how not to accidentally buy a fake pack of cigarettes, experts said.

According to NAFI forecasts, the share of the illegal tobacco market in Russia may grow to 30% due to an increase in excise taxes from this year by 20% instead of the planned 4%, the opening of borders with states supplying gray goods, as well as a decrease in the purchasing power of the population.

“There are risks of increasing counterfeit and smuggling, it will again be profitable to import“ gray ”products here. And our border is very transparent, especially with the EurAsEC countries, where they produce goods with lower excise taxes, ”said the head of the Accounts Chamber, Alexei Kudrin, in the fall of 2020. And so it happened. According to analysts of the KantAr TNS agency, the share of illegal tobacco in Russia has grown by almost 20% in three months.

Market participants had previously warned that a sharp increase in excise taxes from 2021 will lead to an increase in the share of counterfeit goods. As a result, official manufacturers and retailers will lose part of their market share and buyers, who, due to reduced income, will switch to cheap surrogates, said Artem Deev, head of the analytical department at AMarkets.

“On average, according to various estimates, the Russian economy will lose up to 400-500 billion rubles a year from an increase in counterfeit products. After all, people will not smoke less because of the rise in prices, ”the expert noted.

At the same time, Viktor Zykov, a member of the Coordinating Council for Tobacco Control under the Ministry of Health of Russia, believes that the data of the Kantar TNS analytical agency should be viewed with a grain of salt.

“This“ cry of Yaroslavna ”is heard annually. The tobacco companies were very unhappy with the unexpected 20% increase in excise taxes since January this year, so they are preemptively trying to scare the government with an increase in the illegal market share, he says. “They do this before the next scheduled amendments to the Tax Code in order to index excise taxes for the next year.”

According to Zykov, tobacco companies are also trying to show that the increase in excise taxes has led to negative results. “This is certainly not the case. A system of digital marking of tobacco products has been introduced in the country, and a single minimum price has been introduced – 108 rubles per pack of cigarettes. Anything that is sold below this price is an illegal product, that is, it is very easy to identify it, ”he emphasizes.

The estimates of the illegal market are closest to the truth at the level of 8%, but, most likely, these figures are even lower, the expert says. For example, the production of cigarettes in Kazakhstan and Belarus together is approximately 15% of the Russian market. “It turns out that all the tobacco factories in Belarus and Kazakhstan must work all year round only to supply illegal cigarettes to Russia, which, of course, is absurd. Obviously, the tobacco industry of these countries works both for their internal markets and legally supplies products not only to our market, but also to other countries, ”summed up Zykov.

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