Connection of the industry to EGAIS has been postponed

Russian brewers, who predicted the collapse of the industry this summer, got a break. Rosalkogolregulirovanie agreed to postpone for a year - from July 1, 2015 to July 1, 2016 - the deadline for connecting manufacturers to the Unified State Automated Information System (USAIS). Market participants hope that during this time they will be able to ensure that the system works without failures.

Photo: Konstantin Melnitsky, Kommersant / buy photo

Kommersant has at its disposal a draft of government amendments to the law “On state regulation of the production and circulation of alcoholic beverages”, finalized for the second reading in the State Duma. The amendments oblige producers of beer, beer drinks, cider, poire and mead to record information on production volumes in the Unified State Automated Information System (with the exception of enterprises producing these drinks in a volume of no more than 300 thousand decalitres per year). In the text of the document that passed the first reading, this obligation began on July 1 of the current year, but in the new edition the deadline has been shifted to July 1, 2016. Such changes were proposed by the Rosalkogolregulirovanie (RAR), deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy Viktor Zvagelsky told Kommersant. He added that the committee would support the amendments. A Kommersant source at the RAR confirmed that the department supported the postponement.

How producers expected the collapse

The brewers insisted on the need to postpone the introduction of the Unified State Automated Information System for their enterprises. In December 2014, at a specially convened press conference, they predicted the collapse of the industry from July 1.

By this date, it will not be possible to equip all breweries with the necessary equipment and be able to debug its uninterrupted operation, market participants explained their fears. In March, RAP reported that not a single enterprise in the brewing industry had yet connected to the Unified State Automated Information System, emphasizing that the system was functioning without failures.

Currently, EGAIS records only data on produced strong alcohol and wine. The amendments proposed by the RAR also establish the obligation to record in the system data on the turnover of all alcoholic products: from November 1, 2015 at the wholesale level, from July 1, 2016 - at retail (for rural settlements from July 1, 2017). For beer and other fermented drinks, in accordance with the new edition of the document, the deadline for mandatory registration of their turnover in the Unified State Automated Information System (USAIS) is now also shifted to July 1 of the next year.

Vice President for Corporate Affairs at Baltika (part of Carlsberg), Alexey Kedrin, calls PAR’s decision to postpone the deadline a compromise. “We still consider this measure (connection to the Unified State Automated Information System. - Kommersant ) to be excessive for regulating an industry where, unlike strong alcohol, there are practically no illegal products,” he notes. “But if the introduction of the system is inevitable, then we hope “that at least during this transition period all technical problems will be solved.”

Director for Legal Affairs and Corporate Relations at SUN InBev (a structure of Anheuser-Busch InBev) Oraz Durdyev believes that a year is the minimum required for commissioning of EGAIS. The company, according to him, began to prepare in advance for changes in regulation - pilot options for implementing the system were launched at a plant in Klin, near Moscow. “The results obtained indicate one thing: without careful preparation and testing, the introduction of the Unified State Automated Information System is an extremely risky and unjustified undertaking,” sums up Mr. Durdyev.

Wholesalers also expressed concern about the upcoming connection to EGAIS. Opora Rossii, which represents their interests, notes that small and medium-sized wholesale companies selling beer, cider and mead most often do not even have their own warehouses where they could install EGAIS. There are several hundred such organizations operating in Russia, says Alexey Nebolsin, a member of the Opora presidium. He is confident that even the proposed deferment will not help the business, since small players cannot invest about 1 million rubles at a time. installation of EGAIS, purchase of equipment and software. In addition, according to Mr. Nebolsin, mini-breweries producing up to 300 thousand dal of products per year will still have to install EGAIS, since “their products do not immediately go to distributors, but are still stored in production for some time” .

Oleg Trutnev, Anastasia Dulenkova

The beer was allowed to sit for another year.