The government wants to develop the alcohol market so that Russians drink less, but more excise taxes go to the budget. RBC got acquainted with the corresponding plan, which will be discussed by a government commission on Tuesday

Deputy Prime Ministers of Russia Alexander Khloponin and Olga Golodets (Photo: PhotoXPress)

On Tuesday, October 27, a government commission chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin will consider the draft so-called road map for the alcohol industry, two federal officials who will take part in the meeting told RBC.

According to one of RBC’s interlocutors, the document was agreed upon with 18 federal ministries and departments - from Rosalkogolregulirovanie (RAR) to the Ministry of Health and the FSB, and is a set of 23 “measures” - changes to federal laws, government regulations, they should “stabilize the situation in the field of state regulation in the alcohol market.” If the commission approves the road map, the document will go to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev for approval.

Less vodka, more money

The alcohol market has never adopted such a document, the RAR representative emphasized. RBC was able to get acquainted with the final version of the “road map”, which has been being developed since February 2015 .

The “benchmarks” of the implementation of the “road map” are an increase in the amount of excise money collected into the budget, a reduction in alcohol consumption per capita, and a reduction in the presence of illegal vodka on the market, the document itself says (for established indicators, see the table).

According to the project, by the end of 2015 the budget should receive 316.7 billion rubles. from producers of alcoholic beverages, alcohol and alcohol-containing products, which is 4.6% more than in 2014. However, so far the collection of excise taxes is behind schedule: according to the Federal Tax Service (FTS), in January-August, industry enterprises were accrued 175.8 billion rubles. excise tax is 8.1% less than in the first eight months of last year.

“I don’t understand how they are going to ensure an increase in budget revenues by the end of the year,” says Vadim Drobiz, director of the industry agency CIFRRA. — Production of vodka and beer is down by 7–8% compared to last year. Plus, there are no plans to increase the excise tax rate from 2016, so manufacturers will not stock up before the new year.” According to expert estimates, by the end of the year the state will receive 270–275 billion rubles. excise money, that is, 8–10% less than in 2014.

The state plans to increase excise tax collection by reducing the volume of illegal vodka on the market, a source in Khloponin’s office told RBC. The volume of illegal vodka is calculated as the difference between the volume of products produced and the volume sold at retail: from year to year this “surplus” - illegal vodka produced without paying excise duty and not recorded in the EGAIS automatic accounting system - is growing. In 2014, the difference was 22.5%: according to the head of Rosalkogolregulirovanie Igor Chuyan, this meant a loss for the budget of 31 billion rubles.

According to the indicators recorded in the road map, by the end of 2015 the volume of illegal vodka on the market should decrease to 20%, and by 2018 - to 10%.

According to Drobiz’s calculations, the total volume of illegal products, alcohol-containing surrogates, moonshine and pseudo-medicines made with alcohol now exceeds the production of legal vodka in the country - 66.6 million decaliters in 2014, according to Rosstat. The largest volume of “alternative” strong alcohol - more than 40 million decaliters, the expert believes, comes from food alcohol-containing liquids, for example, flavorings for bakery products, etc. “Approximately 20–25 million decalitres is made up of illegal vodka products produced by industry enterprises without paying excise duty. Another 7–8 million dal is homemade vodka obtained from clandestine production, the expert believes. — Hawthorn tinctures sold in pharmacies account for 17–18 million decaliters per year. Well, 15–17 million decalitres is moonshine.” The total volume of the illegal market is about 100 million decalitres per year, Drobiz concludes.

EGAIS against hawthorn

According to the road map, in the first quarter of 2016, the RAR must develop and submit to the State Duma a bill that will separate the licensing of retail sales of alcohol for shops and public catering. Now both of them receive the same licenses worth 65 thousand rubles. per year and must meet the same requirements to receive them.

“We proceed from the fact that the consumption of alcoholic beverages in catering establishments - cafes, restaurants - contributes to increasing the alcohol culture of the population,” a source in Khloponin’s apparatus explained to RBC. — Therefore, licensing of retail sales in public catering can be liberalized. On the other hand, the practice should be stopped by law when two tables are placed in retail stores in order to decorate it as a cafe and be able to sell alcohol at night. This loophole must be closed." He did not specify how exactly the rules for restaurants would change.

Another relaxation is intended for owners of small wineries - peasant farms and small enterprises. A production license for winemakers now amounts to 800 thousand rubles. “For small farms this is an unaffordable amount,” says Leonid Popovich, head of the Union of Winegrowers and Winemakers of Russia (SVVR). In the summer of 2015, SVVR sent a proposal to the Ministry of Finance to reduce the duty for farms producing wine from their own grapes to 65 thousand rubles; The Ministry of Finance then stated that they did not object.

The EGAIS automatic control system will be extended to the retail and wholesale sectors: currently it is mandatory only for production facilities. By mid-2016, the majority of cash registers in stores selling alcohol should be connected to the system (for small settlements, a one-year delay is provided - until September 1, 2017), follows from the road map. “If the system detects a counterfeit excise stamp, it prohibits the sale, and this product does not go through the checkout, and we, in turn, receive information about an attempt to sell illegal alcohol at a specific outlet,” Chuyan explained to RBC. According to him, as part of testing the system, more than 15 thousand cash registers have already been connected to EGAIS, and cases of detection of illegal products at the checkout are not uncommon - they account for about 22% of the total number of purchases.

The authors of the document also decided to combat “dual-use” alcoholic liquids—pseudo-medicines consumed as alcoholic beverages, such as hawthorn tincture. To achieve this, the developers of the “road map” propose to extend the EGAIS system to the production of alcohol according to pharmacopoeial articles - for the manufacture of medicines. In addition, it is proposed to license the production of medical alcohol - in this case, licenses will be issued by the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Strengthening state control over the production of medicines made on an alcohol basis will, of course, affect their cost - they will become more expensive. “However, this will not become a big problem either for manufacturers or for those who use them for medical purposes,” says Nikolai Bespalov, development director of the analytical company RNC Pharma. — Firstly, pharmaceutical companies today can quite painlessly switch to producing analogues of medicinal alcohol tinctures based, for example, on sugar syrup. Their effectiveness is no lower than alcohol.”

At the same time, Bespalov is confident that stricter control over the production of medicinal alcohol and the sale of pseudo-medicinal tinctures will not lead to their disappearance. “As long as the cost of one bottle of such a tincture, purchased for consumption with the aim of getting intoxicated, is one and a half times cheaper in terms of pure alcohol than the cheapest vodka, they will be sold and bought,” the expert believes. “We can deal with them only if we remove the economic sense of purchasing them for non-medicinal purposes—if they become as expensive as vodka.”

Excise taxes for regions

The clause that provided for the redistribution of excise tax flows on strong alcohol disappeared from the final document. Now 40% of the excise tax paid on each bottle of vodka goes to the local budget - where this bottle was produced, the rest goes to the federal budget. This practice leads to manifestations of “vodka separatism,” federal officials believe: regional authorities put up barriers for distributors of “foreign” vodka, stimulating the growth of production at “their” plant in order to receive additional money for the budget.

“What are the regions doing? They introduce elements of unfair competition in relation to products not produced by them. In the Kemerovo region they created their own regional brand. Without it, you can’t sell anything on their territory,” Khloponin told RBC in June . “To prevent this from happening, we decided to centralize 100% of the excise tax.” According to the Deputy Prime Minister, the government discussed the principle of further distribution of these funds: “There is an option - [distribute] depending on consumption ” . The mechanism is being worked out by a working group under the government commission on increasing competitiveness and regulating the alcohol market, Khloponin specified .

However, over the past few months, the government has not decided how to distribute alcohol money. They decided to remove this issue from the final document, Chuyan confirmed. “It was removed from the road map at the initiative of the Ministry of Finance,” explained the head of Rosalkogolregulirovanie. — The Ministry of Finance agrees to centralize [excise tax collection]. But further distribution is an issue that requires elaboration.”

Other provisions excluded from the final version of the road map include the introduction of restrictions on the sale of moonshine stills and changes in the calculation of retrobonuses (premiums for sales volume) between alcohol suppliers and retailers. Nowadays, chains charge suppliers a bonus of up to 10% of the retail price of supplied vodka: for example, 17 rubles. per bottle at a wholesale price of 170 rubles. RAR proposed to exclude the tax component of 100 rubles from the calculation base. excise tax and 21.5 rubles. VAT. Thus, the store would receive a premium of 4.85 rubles from the manufacturer. per bottle instead of 17 rubles.

According to Chuyan, the regulator still supports this initiative, but it is correct to implement it through amendments to the law “On Trade”, which are currently under consideration in the State Duma.

Representatives of the largest vodka companies refused to comment on the draft road map, citing the fact that they were not familiar with the final document. The main owner of Synergy, Alexander Mechetin, promised to do this after the approved document is published, expressing the opinion that “the implementation of EGAIS is certainly an important tool, but an integrated approach is required.” Roust Vice President Igor Kosarev said in a conversation with RBC that “we hope that the solutions proposed by the government will help, because the situation in the legal sector is not easy.”

The government will approve a program to combat illegal alcohol for the first time