Restrictions on procurement of foodstuff for state and municipal needs

Starting September 3rd, 2016 the Government Regulation of the RF “Concerning access restrictions to certain ranges of foodstuff from foreign countries for purposes of procurements for meeting state and municipal needs” as of August 22nd, 2016 №832 came into force.

The Regulation, prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture, is focused on protection of the Russian agricultural market and correspondingly on support of domestic goods producers. The operation of restrictions won’t refer to commercial procurement of shops, outlet chains and public catering enterprises. The goods from the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) countries are exempt from the restrictions, if no less than two applications meeting the requirements while identifying the supplier in the course of public procurement were filed.

In the restrictive list there are such foodstuffs as meat and fish products, milk, cheese, butter, rice, sugar and salt.

In the explanatory note to the Regulation it is stated that the above mentioned goods are produced in Russia and the EEU countries in the quantities sufficient for satisfying the needs of the social sphere.

Significant changes have taken place in the Russian market of foodstuffs recently. The growth of the production in many branches of farming is observed. We have already devoted several publications to production of grain, livestock, fishery и др

Moreover, there is a downtrend of dependence on imports on many types of foodstuff. The following data of the Federal State Statistics Service in the Figure 1 and Table 1 gives evidence to it.

Dependence on imports of cereals, pork, poultry, cheese, preserved meat and confectionery were decreasing with the biggest rates.