Translated material
Dizzy in my head
The idea of a state monopoly on the sale of alcohol has captured the minds of the state
The state actually admitted its failure in trying to establish control over the alcohol market. The introduction of the Unified State Automated Information System (USAIS), through which all alcohol in Russia must pass, did not bring the expected results: legal producers cannot break into the system, and new poisonings from clandestine products coming outside the system are recorded every day. Radical measures are next. As State Duma speaker and head of United Russia Boris Gryzlov said yesterday, the logical step now would be to introduce a state monopoly on the sale of alcohol. Speaker of the Federation Council Sergei Mironov and Minister of Agriculture Alexei Gordeev made similar proposals.The issue of a monopoly on the sale of alcohol, according to Mr. Gryzlov, is already being discussed in the Duma. Last year, more than 30 thousand people died from drinking low-quality alcohol, and in January-August 2006 - 17 thousand, the head of the State Duma reminded reporters yesterday. “This is a terrible number: what is happening now leads to the idea that a state monopoly on the sale of alcohol is not enough, it’s time to raise the issue of a state monopoly on the sale of alcoholic products,” he said.
Last week, the speaker of the Federation Council, leader of the A Just Russia party, Sergei Mironov, spoke in favor of a state monopoly on alcohol. According to Mr. Mironov, a corresponding bill has already been prepared in the upper house. “The State Duma supported us in this. Only the government does not give the go-ahead,” he noted.
The government, apparently, will also soon be ready to take radical measures. At the end of last week, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov once again ordered to find those responsible for the alcohol crisis. All deadlines for such orders, however, have expired a long time ago: they promised to deal with the causes of the crisis and resolve the situation before August 1, before September 1, before September 15... Tax officials added to the panic, declaring that the EGAIS system would not withstand the New Year’s rush, and called on market operators do not postpone transactions until the last days before the New Year, so as not to overload the system.
Last Friday, Mikhail Fradkov gave three days for Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov to prepare a report on measures to correct the current situation, indicating the reasons for non-fulfillment of instructions and the measures that were taken against specific officials.
As it became known following the results of Monday’s meeting with Mr. Zhukov, the conversation now, most likely, will not only be about adjusting the alcohol accounting system, which it was decided not to overload with non-food alcohol-containing products such as perfumes. Alcohol used in the confectionery and tobacco industries can also be excluded from the scope of the Unified State Automated Information System.
Moreover, according to some information, there is an idea circulating in the government to change the system of accounting for alcoholic products, supplementing it with more stringent control measures at the stage of retail sales. According to State Duma Deputy Speaker Vladimir Pekhtin, at the first stage this may include granting regional authorities the authority to accredit alcohol sellers. As Mr. Pekhtin told reporters, this measure will eliminate the possibility of supplies of illegal and counterfeit alcohol-containing products to the retail chain.
The discussion at the government level of much more radical measures to control the alcohol market is partly evidenced by yesterday’s speech by one of the “repeaters” of the state’s alcohol and wine policy, the head of Rospotrebnadzor, Gennady Onishchenko. “There is no need to declare any emergency situations, you just need to put an end to this whole problem harshly, with police measures,” he said. Mr. Onishchenko calls the wave of poisonings with surrogate alcohol that has swept through the regions of Russia a “planned action” against the state’s earlier efforts to oust market for low-quality alcohol producers.
In addition to police measures, the chief sanitary doctor of Russia proposed introducing excise taxes on all types of alcohol, including medical alcohol.
Mr. Onishchenko’s immediate superior, Minister of Health and Social Development Mikhail Zurabov, also considers the wave of mass poisonings to be a conspiracy. He said yesterday that he knows of five enterprises producing low-quality alcohol. The minister refused to name these enterprises, but said that part of the surrogate is supplied from North Ossetia, and the point of the conspiracy is to convince the population of the government’s inability to restore order in the market with the help of the Unified State Automated Information System.
The Ministry of Finance also offers its own ways to solve the problem, considering it reasonable to introduce the so-called minimum retail price for vodka in order to automatically cut off all illegal immigrants. In turn, the auditors of the Accounts Chamber calculated the amount of losses incurred by the budget from uncoordinated actions of the authorities during the introduction of the Unified State Automated Information System. This is almost 15 billion rubles. At the same time, the production of low-quality alcohol, which was the reason for the creation of the Unified State Automated Information System, has, according to some estimates, increased by 10 billion rubles since its introduction, and cases of poisoning with surrogates have noticeably increased this fall.