The Ministry of Agriculture proposed to include sugar and butter in the list of socially significant products in order to exempt their producers from obligatory payments to retail chains, Izvestia reports, citing a letter from the department to Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko.
According to the Law “On Trade”, suppliers pay retail bonuses, the amount of which reaches 5% of the price of the goods. These funds should be directed to advertising, marketing, logistics and other services.
However, manufacturers of some socially important goods, including chicken, milk, and wheat and rye bread, are exempted from these payments. In addition, regional authorities can freeze the price of any product from this list for 90 days if it rises in price by 30% or more within a month. Now the list of socially significant products includes 24 items, including different types of meat (chicken, pork, beef), milk, salt, tea, potatoes, carrots and apples.
The Soyuzrossahar told the newspaper that sugar producers no longer pay rewards to retailers. Sunflower oil producers continue to do this, said Mikhail Maltsev, Executive Director of the Fat and Oil Union. According to him, the practice was suspended from December 2020 to October 2021, when prices for butter and sugar were frozen in Russia, but after this period, some retail chains resumed it.
Igor Nikolaev, head of the Institute for Strategic Analysis, expects that the proposed measures will have a “limited” effect, giving producers only a few months’ delay. Then they will still be forced to raise prices, which is what the Ministry of Agriculture fears.
On November 8, Abramchenko instructed the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Federal Antimonopoly Service to prepare proposals to stabilize prices for sugar and sunflower oil. In November, according to Rosstat, the average retail prices for sugar in the country increased over the year by 4.3% and amounted to 54.6 rubles per 1 kg, for sunflower oil – by 9.9% (135.1 rubles per liter).
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