The tooth of stupidity

The expulsion of foreigners from markets has led to rising prices and reduced trade volumes

The complete ban on foreigners trading in markets , introduced by the Russian authorities on April 1, led to the consequences that unbiased observers unanimously spoke about. The government's attempts to establish a “new order” in agricultural markets , while somehow avoiding a reduction in the quantity of products sold and rising prices, do not yet seem to lead to the desired result. Recent data from Rosstat shows that there are fewer goods on the markets, and prices in a number of regions are growing at rates significantly higher than the general inflation rate.

It is primarily the poor buyer who suffers, since in markets where goods are on average cheaper than in stores and chain supermarkets, today it is mainly Russians with low incomes who shop. According to the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, from 20 to 60% of Russians go to markets, depending on the region.

In early March, at a government meeting, the head of the Ministry of Social Health Development, Mikhail Zurabov, argued that the new rules of trade in markets, which provide, in particular, for assigning places to agricultural producers and a ban on trading to foreigners, have not and will not have a negative impact on the situation with the volumes of products sold and prices. According to him, monitoring carried out every week in 59 markets in 16 regions of the federation showed that “there was no significant reduction in jobs.” “The situation with commodity items is also stable. The dynamics of prices in retail trade in the first two months of the year turned out to be lower than inflation,” the minister reported then.

A little later, the director of the Federal Migration Service, Konstantin Romodanovsky, reported that on April 1, the day the complete ban was introduced, he personally visited two Moscow markets - Riga and Leningrad. In Rizhsky, according to him, out of 300 retail spaces, 10-15 were empty. “These figures show a slight reduction in jobs in the market, which should not in any way affect the rise in prices,” he said, adding: “If you remove 10-15 teeth from a shark, nothing terrible will happen.” But it seems that it turned out as if 10-15 teeth were removed from a person.

Judging by Rosstat data, the true state of affairs is unlikely to put officials in such a complacent mood. The average increase in prices in retail markets from March 28 to April 4 was the highest since the beginning of the year, according to the department’s materials prepared for yesterday’s government meeting on improving labor migration processes. The largest increase in prices for food products was noted in Chelyabinsk - 16.3%. In Khabarovsk the growth was 1.2%, in St. Petersburg and Makhachkala - 0.8%. At the same time, inflation in the country for the entire March was only 0.6%. The largest price increases were recorded for eggs, certain types of fruits and vegetables, as well as for chickens and chicken legs.

If prices in markets rise, then the level of use of retail spaces, on the contrary, is steadily declining. In the Moscow markets, for example, over the same period (from March 28 to April 4) it decreased from 76 to 68%, in St. Petersburg - from 57 to 55%. The reduction of traders led to a decrease in sales volumes. In the markets of the two capitals, sales of vegetables and fruits, sausages, smoked meats and fish products began to decrease, and in the markets of, for example, Arkhangelsk and the Tambov region, sales of meat decreased.

It is clear that the government is not happy with this development of events. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, at yesterday's meeting in the White House, which was held behind closed doors, called on his subordinates to closely monitor the dynamics of prices and jobs in retail agricultural markets. True, what measures the government plans to take to radically change the situation were not announced at the end of the meeting. This is not surprising: it is too difficult to argue with the laws of a market economy and demographic realities.

Mikhail VOROBYEV