The Administration Takes Up Snowboarding
An interagency commission on trade protection measures and customs tariffs policy has supported proposal by the Association of Sports Industry Enterprises, an organization of more than 40 manufacturers, importers and high-end retailers of sporting goods, to lower the customs duty on imported sporting goods from 15 percent to 5 percent. The proposal will be submitted to the administration within the next seven to ten days and may be signed by the prime minister by the end of the month. That change is expected to go into effect at the beginning of 2006. According to the ASIE, with a lowered duty, imports will grow from $181 million in 2004 to $253 million in 2006, with tariffs collection lowering only from $12.7 million in 2004 to $11.5 million in 2006 and the loss of income will be made up for in sales taxes. The new duty rate is expected to last for five years and be renewable.
The new rate applies only to 15 types of goods that are not produced in Russia: snowboards, tennis equipment, gymnastics equipment, certain types of skis, etc. Nonetheless, domestic manufacturers have reacted negatively to the proposal. “If their goal was to increase demand for sporting goods, they could have done it differently,” said Sergey Pastushenko, commercial director of the Fan Sport sports equipment company. “Instead of opening the market completely, they could have lowered the customs duty on industrial equipment for the production of sporting goods. Now it will be possible to bring in cheap imports and no one will think about opening up production here.”
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All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 07, 2005
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