In poor green colors

Environmental fee will be another way to remove extra money from the population

From the point of view of consumer dynamics, 2018 showed ambiguous results. On the one hand, there were no big shocks in the economy, even vice versa. The stabilization of the macroeconomic situation, the accumulated deferred demand and the growth of lending led to a slight revival of retail trade in the first half of the year. Inflation is still held within the forecasts of the Central Bank (3.5%).

On the other hand, there are distinct signals in favor of the fact that an increase in the waste of Russians is only a short respite before the next tightening of the belts. By the end of the summer, real incomes of the population resumed their fall. The average check in the largest retail chains in annual terms continues to decline. Given that prices in stores are rising in one way or another, this means forced savings in the quantity and quality of the purchased goods.

Ahead of many factors that can increase pressure on consumer demand: an increase in VAT rate, increased indexation of housing and communal services tariffs and excise taxes on gasoline, further fluctuations in the ruble.

Plus, the inflationary expectations of Russians are regularly heated by manufacturers' warnings about the upcoming increase in prices for individual groups of goods. Last week, bread and sugar were among the first applicants for the rise in price. Now the list has replenished again: this time the government decided to call citizens' wallets to protect the environment.

Due to the plans of the Ministry of Natural Resources, which is going to sharply increase environmental rates from January 1, 2019, the price tag for food and drinks will grow by at least 1%, the market participants warn. For some groups of goods, payment will increase repeatedly - for example, from 2.4 thousand to 20 thousand rubles per ton of metal packaging made of aluminum.

According to the estimates of the sources of Kommersant, in case of raises in the training rates, the amount of deductions of large players in favor of the state can grow from 100-200 to 500 million rubles per year. Together, Ekkosbor can bring about 14 billion rubles to the budget in 2019 and 20 billion in 2020, which is many times more than past forecasts of the government.

Several industry associations made a protest against the initiative of the Ministry of Natural Resources, including the Pivovars Union, the National Union of Milk Manufacturers and the Association of Largest Products of Consumer Products “Rusbrend” and “Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Procter & Gamble). The oncoming business offer is to instead of a shock increase smoothly increase bets for 3 years.

Now the collection is required to pay manufacturers and importers of environmentally harmful goods and packaging (in total 54 categories), which are not able to independently ensure their processing after use.

The paradox is that it is often impossible to fulfill the recycling standards of government for objective reasons.

Companies that would like to go along the path of creating their own processing capacities are faced with a large number of barriers: from the lack of infrastructure for separate garbage collection to the total opacity of the secondary processing market.

The main, but not the only problem is a lack of garbage collection sites. “In some countries, this load is assigned to municipalities, which, due to subsidies, organize the collection of household items that have lost consumer properties. In Russia, this niche has not yet been closed, ”says Alexander Bagin, the supervisor of the Institute for Economics of Nature Management and Ecological Policy of the Higher Superior.

An increase in bets in such a situation may force companies to reduce investments in their own waste collection and processing systems. The business warns that this will not improve the situation with waste, but it will help large processors and the Ministry of Finance, who is looking for financing under the national project in the field of ecology.

In fact, the ecosbor is already quasinogue in nature now - it is very difficult to avoid these expenses for companies. Nevertheless, he showed very low collection, says Bagin: the government collected much less than it planned initially. This is what attracted the attention of the Ministry of Finance, which for fiscal purposes lobbies the creation of a single environmental tax. Unlike targeted fees, taxes are easier to administer, but they are aimed at replenishing the budget, and not at creating an effective secondary processing industry, and even more so not to contain retail prices. The question, as always, is in priorities, and in this case they lie on the surface.