Importers Summoned to Fight Inflation
In addition to freezing the prices and trimming import duties on vital products, Russia's animal and plant health watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor has opened domestic market for foreign producers. It has widened the list of milk plants of Ukraine that may deliver product to Russia and increased the number of meat suppliers. Even China that has been in the country’s black list of animal product importers for nearly ten years may supply meat to Russia now.
Three more enterprises of Ukraine – Kovelmoloko, Svetlovodsk Plant and Zhitomirmoloko – have been sanctioned to export their dairy produce to Russia, Rosselkhoznadzor announced Wednesday. So, ten of 28 dairy enterprises of Ukraine may sell their product here.
Moreover, Rosselkhoznadzor appears equally loyal to meat producers, having sanctioned this week the supplies from Brazil, Hungary, Germany, other European countries and from Australia. Even China may supply rabbit meat to Russia, though it has been nearly ten years in the RF black list of animal product importers.
But the policy of Russia’s animal and plant health watchdog has been rather unfriendly until very recently. This authority of Russia was gradually closing the market for foreign countries in the past two years. In 2006 separately, it banned or sustained imports of fish, rice, meat and dairy produce from a number of countries, fueling the prices for foodstuff in Russia. Wholesale prices for herring, mackerel and salmon, for instance, surged 100 percent past year once Rosselkhoznadzor toughened the terms for importing Norwegian fish.
The government focused on the attempts to drive down food prices, once the Federal Statistics Service promulgated in September the data on price growth for a number of key products, including cheese (50 percent to 70 percent), oil (15 percent), milk (7.2 percent) and some other. The authorities decided to trim import duties on dried milk and freeze prices for bread, milk and butter. Today’s forecast for the annual inflation is 10 percent instead of the previous 8 percent.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 25, 2007
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