The strict restriction of food prices by the state will lead to the fact that producers will be deprived of the incentive and opportunity for modernization, said President of Miratorg Viktor Linnik. At the same time, he noted that the current agreement to contain prices for sunflower oil was a tactical decision due to force majeure circumstances.
“When you start toughly dealing with price regulation – for the same sunflower oil along the entire chain, there will be no motive to develop there. There will not be just a product, we will return to the good Soviet times at the level of “you to me – I to you”, “- said Mr. Linnik in an interview with TIme. He said the current decision on oil prices is “tactical” and “related to the COVID situation, with force majeure.”
In the long term, according to Mr. Linnik, it is necessary to ensure the growth of incomes of the population and social support. As ways to achieve this, he named the issuance of food certificates and the reduction of the quota for labor migrants by three to four times. Foreign labor, according to the head, leads to a decrease in the cost of labor on the market. “If our employees receive the same salary, they simply will not survive,” he said of the salaries of migrants in Russia.
The authorities began regulating food prices in late 2020, after criticizing the rise in prices by President Vladimir Putin. At the same time, manufacturers and retailers agreed to fix the selling price of sugar and butter. According to the head of the Ministry of Economy of the Russian Federation Maxim Reshetnikov, price dampers are designed to induce domestic producers to develop production and deepen processing in the Russian agro-industrial sector.
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