A buyer looks at the Damskaya Vodka (Ladies' Vodka) label in the Metro hypermarket.
Photo: Vasily Shaposhnikov
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The Drunkenness Tax
State Duma member Viktor Zvagelsky has suggested imposing fiscal responsibility on the alcohol producers for impairing nation’s health. The actual proposal is that distilleries should transfer for the medical assistance 2 rubles from each 0.5-litter bottle of vodka. The bill is being submitted to the Duma in two weeks after Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev urged lawmakers to elaborate laws so that the alcohol revenues could be spent for alcoholism treatment.
The bill elaborated by Viktor Zvagelsky, who chairs the State Duma’s subcommittee for the government’s control over excise goods market, suggests making distilleries responsible for produced alcohol. It also specifies procedures to repair the damage caused to the nation’s health.
The lawmaker proposes introducing mandatory payments, whereby the distilleries would transfer money to a self-managed organization for rendering medical assistance in addiction clinics and other specialized medical institutions. “The appropriations will go to cure the addicts, build new and upgrade old clinics and to prevent alcoholism through social advertising about the harm it does,” Zvagelsky said.
The calculation will be based on the physical volume of anhydrous ethyl alcohol in produced alcohol product; the proposed rate is 10 ruble per a liter.
Therefore, the producers of vodka (40-percent strength) will pay 4 ruble per a liter or 2 ruble per a bottle of 0.5 liter. The market players say the manufacturer’s price for the low-cost vodka ranges from 60 ruble to 65 ruble, the retail price is roughly 85 ruble per a 0.5-liter bottle. According to official statistics authority Rosstat, Russia’s output of 40-degree product reached 1.385 billion liters in 2007; vodka and alcoholic beverages accounted for 131.5 million decaliters. Given that the strong-drink output varies around 10 percent from year to year, the distilleries will pay from 5 billion ruble to 5.5 billion ruble if the rate equals 4 ruble per a liter.
Of interest is that the web of the RF Health and Social Development Ministry says the government plans to appropriate 3.5 billion ruble to establish the healthy style of life in part of opposing alcoholism and smoking under the Health National Project in 2009.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 17, 2008
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