Translated material
There are no bazaars
The Ministry of Industry asked to postpone the trade law
A bill on state regulation of trade activities will not appear until the end of the year. According to the Interfax agency, the Ministry of Industry and Trade , recently created less than a month ago within the government of Vladimir Putin, sent a letter to the government with a request to postpone the preparation of the law to the fourth quarter of this year. The reason for postponing the deadline for introducing the bill is a change in the structure of federal executive bodies.Prime Minister Vladimir Putin instructed to submit the bill to the government by May 30, adding a chapter on the specifics of selling agricultural products. The document provides for various measures of government intervention in trade activities , limits the work of large retail chains and introduces restrictions on the size of trade markups on socially significant groups of goods, and also prescribes a mechanism for strengthening the control of antimonopoly authorities over the activities of retail chains.
The reason for the request for a transfer is obvious. Viktor Khristenko’s department has been dealing with trade issues for less than a month, so it was really difficult to get up to speed with such a period of time. However, the reason is not only lack of time. The bill affects the interests of a wide variety of groups, and it is almost impossible to bring them to a common denominator.
It should be recalled that the Ministry of Economic Development, which then had the prefix “and trade” in its name, was developing the law for more than two years , and the deadline for considering the document in the government was postponed several times. Networkers were the first to speak out against the upcoming law. The fact is that the law introduces the concept of market dominance and limits the work of large retailers in favor of small businesses.
Then it became known that the law provides for such a measure as state regulation of prices for socially important goods. And then all traders, both large and small, began to unanimously oppose this measure. Depending on the situation, government decree can either introduce maximum trade markups or establish fixed government prices. True, the law establishes a closed list of ten socially significant goods, including bread, milk, meat, sunflower oil, salt and sugar, and a rather complex procedure for its introduction.
After this, defenders of state interests were added to private lobbyists. Minister of Agriculture Alexey Gordeev said that trade in agricultural products has a number of specific features and therefore cannot be regulated by a general law. It was decided to write a separate chapter on the trade in meat and vegetables.
After the formation of the government of Vladimir Putin, trade, and with it the preparation of this bill, moved from the Ministry of Economic Development to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
As the Ministry of Economic Development explained to Vremya Novostei yesterday, all materials on the topic were transferred to the Ministry of Industry and Trade at the end of May. True, the Department for Domestic Trade Regulation itself remains in its entirety within the Ministry of Economic Development. Thus, it is not yet clear whether this department will continue to work on the law or whether it will all start from scratch in the new ministry.