Translated material
Individual entrepreneurs decided to ban selling beer
Rosalkogolregulirovanie has developed a draft of amendments prohibiting individual entrepreneurs from retailing beer and similar drinks. This was reported by the Kommersant newspaper, which had the document at its disposal.
The initiative concerns beer, beer drinks, cider, poiret (pear cider) and mead, the newspaper writes. The ban is proposed to be introduced in most regions from July 1, 2017, in Crimea and Sevastopol - from the beginning of 2018.
The need for a ban, according to the authors of the document, is due to the fact that individual entrepreneurs often declare much less beer than they sell. This, in turn, is due to low fines for individuals for failure to provide declarations, according to the department.
The SUN Inbev brewing company told Kommersant that individual entrepreneurs sell at least 37 percent of their products. In Baltika, they said that they are cooperating with about a hundred thousand individual entrepreneurs. In addition, according to one of the interlocutors of the publication, 90 percent of the points of sale of live beer are recorded specifically for individual entrepreneurs.
Yevgeny Fedotov, the owner of the Glavpivmag craft beer retail chain, believes that some businessmen will leave the market in the event of a ban on the sale of beer, while others will continue to work in the dark. […] President of the Coalition of Owners of Small Trade Format Vladlen Maksimov believes that the proposal of the Ministry of Finance will have a negative impact not only on small businesses in the field of trade, but also in the field of beer production.