ACORT responds to criticism of new trade rules from the FAS

Excluding logistics services from the remuneration threshold for retailers will not cause an increase in food prices. The chairman of the Presidium of the Association of Retail Trade Companies (ACORT) told Izvestia on December 18. Stanislav Bogdanov.

This is how he responded to the feedback from the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) on the new trade rules prepared by the Ministry of Industry and Trade. One of the points proposed to exclude the cost of logistics from the five percent remuneration that suppliers pay to retail chains. However, the FAS considered that this could lead to higher prices.

"The retailer's remuneration is not included in the price of the product. On the contrary, increasing access to the logistics infrastructure of retail can significantly reduce the costs of suppliers themselves and contribute to lower prices. Logistics services — transportation, storage, forwarding, sorting and processing — are directly related to the supplier's costs for delivering goods to the shelf," Bogdanov explained.

According to him, logistics services of retail chains are cheaper than the market due to volume and scale, but they cannot provide them in the proper volume due to the 5% limit.

"For a number of suppliers, logistics already takes up to 3.9–4.1% of the legally established five percent limit, and when working in remote regions outside the Central Federal District, these costs multiply, which makes the strict restriction on the use of retail chain logistics economically inadequate to the real cost structure," the expert explained.

Wholesale and difference: FAS criticized the new trading rules due to the risks of rising prices

Why did the service not support the proposals of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and what other difficulties does it see?

Prior to that, on December 12, the business proposed to the Ministry of Industry and Trade to finalize the draft roadmap of the national trading model. It was developed by the Ministry and includes 12 legislative proposals, each of which regulates network and non-network retail in one way or another. As Artem Sokolov, president of the Association of Internet Commerce Companies (AKIT), told Izvestia, the document needs to be supplemented, and a number of provisions need to be excluded.

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