The consumer protection organization “Public Consumer Initiative” (PII) advocated maintaining the speed of implementation of the labeling system for all categories of goods. OPI stated its position in a letter to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, a copy of which is available from socialbites.ca.
Previously, the government partially simplified further enforcement of product labeling. On March 30, Mikhail Mishustin signed a decree that the start of the mandatory stage of labeling dairy products for farms and agricultural cooperatives was postponed to December 1, 2023, giving retailers a deadline for milk until September of this year, and accordingly. bottled water – until March 2023. At the same time, the already introduced labeling for a number of product categories will be preserved. Voluntary trials of the labeling of beer, dietary supplements, antiseptics and medical devices will also continue.
Tempo must be kept
PIO opposes the suspension of tagging. First of all, it will help curb the rise in prices, which has caused “unreasonable concerns” among Russians, according to the organization. Human rights activists point to Rosstat data: Annual inflation in Russia rose to 15.66% as of March 25, compared to 14.53% a week ago, according to data from the Ministry of Economic Development. This is a record since September 2015, when annual inflation was 15.7%.
“There is no doubt that inflation is caused by many factors. First of all, the malicious actions of unfriendly countries and the transnational companies participating in them. They ceased to carry out and develop their production, transport and logistics, trade and other activities in Russia.
Or they continue to do so in bad faith (announcing price increases, arousing excitement, fueling fears of scarcity) ignoring the legitimate interests of Russian consumers and other counterparties, including setting arbitrary prices for their products and exerting an informative effect on consumer consciousness. , etc.)”, – comes after the letter.
Therefore, in PIO’s view, the pace of labeling implementation needs to be sustained for all categories of goods. This “will allow the government to receive real-time, objective and independent data on product stocks in the wholesale and retail sector, and to stop the manipulation and speculation of retail chains, intermediaries and manufacturers in a timely manner.” The PIR stated that consumers will also be able to track the availability of goods in stores and notify regulatory authorities if they are not available.
“The Chestny Znak application, the user part of the labeling system, will allow each consumer to be involved in the process of independent control, which will be able to monitor the presence of goods in the store’s assortment and report its absence. to the control and supervisory authorities, which will learn in real time what kind of products the commercial enterprise actually owns and for what reason it keeps them in warehouses.
According to the PIO, these labeling systems will help prevent negative effects on import substitution and the development of parallel imports: information will be available on the volume of products manufactured in the country and actual (and not lobbyed by the business) import needs. OPI has calculated that the percentage of fakes among canned meat and fish, baby food, alcoholic products, animal feed is between 20% and 90%. The number of violations in this and other segments will also decrease due to tagging. We are talking about drugs, tobacco, light industrial products (clothing and shoes), perfumery.
The government’s press service confirmed that the letter was received from human rights activists. “The OPI letter was received by the government apparatus and sent to the Ministry of Industry and Trade for consideration in the prescribed manner,” the cabinet told Gazeta.ru.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade informed socialbites.ca that the ministry supports initiatives aimed at combating illegal smuggling of industrial products. “The digital signage system allows not only to establish and maintain full control over the volume of delivery and prices of products in the context of each subject, settlement, brokerage and trading facility of the Russian Federation, but also to protect the consumer from unreasonable prices. increases,” he said.
The ministry noted that the role of labeling has increased to protect consumers and the market from potentially dangerous products, given the legalization of parallel imports as well as the facilitation in the field of technical regulation.
“Therefore, the government supports the further development and use of the capabilities of the product labeling system by government, business and consumers. Point decisions to postpone certain stages of mandatory labeling were made only in terms of the requirements for providing information to the labeling system on the disposal of goods at the checkout, with regard to dairy products and water for individual participants – restaurants, farmers and retail outlets. ”said the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
Economists are for labeling, business is against it
PRUE Entrepreneurship and Logistics Department Lecturer Assoc. GV Plekhanov Igor Stroganov noted that the labeling of goods is not a panacea, but in general its benefits are undeniable.
“The idea of labeling shows the desire of the state to slow the flow of counterfeiting: “Turkish” leather shoes, questionable perfumes and other goods. Labeling is needed especially in parallel import conditions. Thus, we will be able to distinguish Russian quality goods from goods of unknown origin. And it will be possible to cope with the shortage of Russian goods faster, because he will act in the role of a buyer rather than an official verifier. It is clear that the introduction of labeling for all necessary types of goods means significant expenditures by the state and a certain burden on entrepreneurs. But if we want to live in a transparent economy and use high-quality goods, we definitely have to pay for it,” says Stroganov.
Olga Panina, Associate Professor at the Department of State and Municipal Administration of the Financial University of the Government of the Russian Federation, is confident that, against the background of the current economic situation, the decree signed on March 30 does not seem systematically critical. Introduction of product labeling calculated up to 2024.
“Many product groups have already been marked in the country now. The list is updated every year. The 2022 plan includes nine product lines. The adoption of deferring dairy labeling for the agricultural sector is driven by the need to support such initiatives,” Panina explained.
Business representatives are confident that labeling will not help solve the problems identified by the PIR.
“Inflation is really rising, and the reasons for this are directly related to the actions of foreign states. However, the labeling of goods cannot prevent this in any way. According to our survey in February 2022, 51.6% of entrepreneurs have increased prices because of the markup, which, on the contrary, contributes to inflation. Marking – for a quiet time. “Now the main thing is to saturate the market with goods,” said Anton Sviridenko, head of the specialist center of business ombudsman Boris Titov.
In his opinion, it is necessary to monitor the real situation, but the Federal Tax Service really successfully copes with this, using its modern and advanced tools. “And inflation is calculated by Rosstat, not based on data from the labeling system. We need deep elaboration of economic decisions, not chatter. In the end, new labeling projects have already been suspended at the initiative of the headquarters to improve the sustainability of the economy – this is not a signal,” he said.