| Entrepreneurs ask to return what they lost during the alcohol crisis The minimum is to postpone the introduction of the Unified State Automated Information System (USAIS), the maximum is to demand compensation for losses caused to the industry. Such demands are contained in an appeal from Business Russia sent yesterday to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, signed by participants in the alcohol market.
In their appeal to the Prime Minister, entrepreneurs ask to postpone the final introduction of the Unified State Automated Information System until January 1, 2007, allowing the system to operate in test mode for now. Summing up the results of yesterday's round table on ways to overcome the crisis in the alcohol market, industry representatives decided to petition the government to consider the issue of possible compensation for losses of legal alcohol market operators associated with ineffective regulation and reform of the alcohol industry by government authorities. “No state is immune from mistakes, but when making them, one must be able to admit it,” says Boris Titov, chairman of Business Russia.
In order for the alcohol business to start operating again, urgent emergency measures taken at the government level and simplification of the EGAIS system, which is overloaded with unnecessary functions, are needed, President of the National Union of Alcohol Market Participants Osman Paragulgov is sure. “The paradox of the situation is that if there had not been a shortage, if the consumer had not suffered, no one would have noticed the problems of the alcohol industry, which is bled dry by the fight against ill-conceived decisions of the authorities,” says Vadim Drobiz, director of the information department of the Union of Alcohol Market Participants. But there is no way back with the abolition of the Unified State Automated Information System, he is sure that a new revision of the legislation will collapse the market. “The law has already practically brought down the market, if not vodka, then winemaking,” adds the president of the Union of Winegrowers and Winemakers Valery Loginov. “The law on the circulation of alcohol and alcohol-containing products includes drinks produced without the use of alcohol, that is, natural wines, which has brought unique enterprises to the brink of ruin."
Other market participants were much more radical. “EGAIS is inherently unviable, even if its introduction is postponed for six months, because the state actually offers us to sell peas not by weight, but individually and by number,” says Yuri Shorin, a representative of the Moscow Champagne Wine Factory. “The state, having caused us serious losses, has no idea how the EGAIS system should function.” “Three EGAIS representatives, having stayed at the enterprise for two days, were unable to set up the system,” echoes Igor Polyakov from the Stolichny Trust distillery.
Heads of departments who ineffectively implement decisions that lead to financial losses for both the state and the market should bear financial responsibility, the round table participants considered. “If the state has failed both the deadlines for issuing new brands and the deadlines for introducing re-labeling regulations into force, such actions of the authorities can only be called “masterpieces of blatant lawlessness,” says Alexander Romanov from the Committee of Alcohol Manufacturers of the Association of European Businesses in Russia. Moreover, the activities of customs that cause the least complaints from the authorities among business representatives are the activities of customs - the importers themselves now retroactively call the previous system of control over imports “magnificent.”
A representative of the Federal Customs Service (FCS), in turn, confirmed that customs is already ready to accept information about products from importers to record information in the Unified State Automated Information System, but complained that importers have not yet submitted information.
The most philosophical of all those present was the representative of the Ministry of Agriculture, which, among other departments, oversees the production and circulation of alcohol. Conceptually, the law cannot be repealed in order to avoid worsening the crisis, but it is not yet possible to rewrite it, because the deputies are on vacation, recalled Andrei Mezhonov, deputy director of the food industry department of the Ministry of Agriculture. The official agreed that in its current form the EGAIS system does not solve the problem of shadow turnover, and supported representatives of the wine industry who insist on excluding wine products from the scope of the law on the circulation of alcohol and alcohol-containing products.
“The alcohol industry is highly social, but there is no department in the government structure that oversees it,” recalls Petr Kanygin, chairman of the board of directors of the Wine World holding. In the meantime, while the “period of troubled waters” continues, shadow traders will not be lost, and the share of counterfeit products will increase from the previous 40-50% to 90%, he predicts. Irina SKLYAROVA |
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