Vodka to Keep On Flowing Uncalculated
Monitoring alcohol production and movement in an automated system in February will trigger the second wave of alcohol crisis, experts at Russia’s Audit Chamber believe. They suggest that the new regulation be enforced only in July. Alcohol market agrees with the auditors’ conclusion while the government and the Duma consider these concerns ungrounded.
All alcohol producing plants and warehouses of alcohol products are to be equipped with automated meters for alcohol and spirit-based movement registration by February 1, 2007. This is part of the United State Automated Data System (in Russia, EGAIS). These meters are expected to be at every alcohol producer to send data onto the central server. However, after the EGAIS was launched this July, it gave so many failures and breakdowns that the introduction of automated meters was put off from July this year to next February. For the time being, data from the meters are collected manually.
Auditors at the Audit Chamber now suggest postponing the introduction of the system at distilleries for another six month. The agency has already sent this suggestion to the government, Sergey Abramov, an auditor at the Audit Chamber, reported on Monday. “All alcohol plants and warehouses are now installing this equipment. They doubt, though, that the project will be implemented in time. Otherwise, it will spark a new alcohol crisis,” Abramov said. “We suggest that the government extend the deadline for introducing it for six months because the equipment does not only need to be installed but tried and adjusted as well.
Market participants support the Audit Chamber’s conclusion. Dmitry Dobrov, spokesperson for the Union of Alcohol Producers, reminds that officials have not yet prepared all necessary regulations for transferring the industry to the system of automated meters. Russia’s Finance and Agriculture Ministries were to determine the order of equipping plants with meters by July 28 as well as the list of the necessary data to be transmitted. In its turn the Federal Tax Service was to determine the mode of the transmission by August 28. “The alcohol market will be facing a situation on July 1 if the meters do not transmit the data to the EGAIS server,” Dibrov says. “All plants in the country will be brought to a standstill because all products with no information in the EGAIS system will be considered illegal.
“Buying the meters is not a problem, but protocols which help to put software into meters and in the EGAIS are in shortage,” a top manager at a major vodka producer said. “As soon as orders of the Finance Ministry will be signed, we will need some time to create this kind of product.”
Sergey Sorokin, director general of Russky Alkogol, says that there must be a requirements specification from the ministries. “What is more, producers of the meters are not ready for this kind of influx of orders from alcohol producers, so some plants will get the equipment only by February,” he said.
However, Duma deputies and officials strongly oppose the suggestion.
A high-placed source in the Russian government told Kommersant that a new delay in introducing meters at plans is hardly possible. “There are some 100 alcohol plants in this country, and they have already got a six-month deferment,” he said. “As for alcoholic beverages plants, they have installed the equipment. They just need new software to connect it with the EGAIS, so they should not be no problems with using this equipment.”
Yury Medvedev, first deputy head of the Duma’s economic policy committee, is more outright. “They must be no further delays,” he said. “There have been problems only with distilleries but alcoholic beverages plants are already equipped to give all data.” The deputy claims that the Audit Chamber tries to safeguard interests of certain alcohol producers. “I can see it clearly where the influence is coming from,” he told Kommersant. “It goes from the south [most illegal alcohol products are produced in the Southern Federal District]. But we can no longer keep the door open to slack control over stealing excises.”
Alexander Demchuk and Arina Sharipova
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 28, 2006
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