Retailers are afraid that garbage reform will lead to "empty shelves" in stores

The Retail Company Association (Acort), which includes large Russian retail chains, including Magnit, X5 Group, Lenta, and the Association of Internet trade companies (Akit, among its members of Wildberries, Plaintos and Ozon) said that the Ministry of Natural Resources on the responsibility of manufacturers for future utilization of goods and goods display and Ozon) Packaging creates the risks of departure of trading into the gray area. “The application of this prohibition in the conditions proposed by the bill with a high degree of probability can lead to empty shelves in trade objects and reduction/reversing the choice in the assortment of online stores,” the ACOT and Akit leaders, which they sent the head of the Ministry of Natural Resources to Alexander Kozlov on July 8, said. This document quotes RBC.

The Association of trading companies and manufacturers of electric and computer equipment (RATEK) supports the position of acort and Akit, said its public relations director Anton Guskov. All three associations on July 16 sent letters with similar comments to the bill at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Agriculture.

The Ministry of Natural Resources has prepared amendments “On Waste of Production and Consumption” and “On the Basics of State Regulation of Trade Activities in the Russian Federation” within the framework of the expanded liability of manufacturers (ROP) in Russia. They involve the creation of a register of goods and goods in packaging in a unified state information system for waste accounting from the use of goods (EGIS Wheit) and the introduction of a ban on the sale of goods, information about which is not entered into the register. This information is needed to control the payment of an ecosborne with manufacturers for the subsequent disposal of goods. Reporting in the framework of the ROP, formally operating since 2015, but never earned, in 2020, about 20 thousand companies out of about 4 million were transferred to report on the disposal of goods or packaging, follows from the data of Rosprirodnadzor.

In total, about 4 billion rubles were raised from business for a year. The Ministry of Natural Resources previously predicted that after the reform, the ecosbor could grow to 136 billion rubles.

According to the new concept of ROP, adopted by the government at the end of 2020, by the beginning of 2022, a 100 percent disposal of packaging should be introduced in the country, and the rate of disposal of goods or the payment of the ecosborne will be in stages (now the standards for the disposal of various goods and types of packaging are ranging from 10 to 45%).

However, the ban on the sale of goods, information about which is not entered into the EGIS WAITR register, will lead to the destruction of the current legal turnover system and the formed chains of production and marketing of goods in Russia, the letter of the leaders of the acorts and Akit says. The business is “completely incomprehensible” how the information will be collected in the register of goods in the absence of information about the exact number of the subjects of the ROP that produce them. The fact that now no more than 3-5% of the manufacturers of goods fulfill the recycling standards within the framework of the ROP is not related to the insufficiency of sanctions for manufacturers of goods, but with the extremely low efficiency of the administration system, "said representatives of trade.

In the case of the adoption of the bill, retail chains and online stores see the risks of “blocking the legal channels of sales of a huge number of items of goods”, which will lead to flowing a significant part of their manufacturers, especially small and medium-sized businesses, into the gray area-to markets and fairs.

RATEK Public Relations Director calls the requirement to register all goods in the new registry “direct prohibition of freedom of economic activity”.

The waste registry operator does not agree with the forecast of trade representatives. “There are no risk of empty shelves,” said Denis Butsaev, general director of the Russian Ecological Operator (REO), who on July 2 became a single operator of waste accounting systems in Russia instead of the Ministry of Natural Resources.

According to him, for manufacturers and importers, entering information to the register will not lead to additional costs. “Now they are obliged to declare the goods and packaging. We offer instead of declaring the entry of information to the electronic system. This is international practice, ”Denis Butsaev assured.