Ministry of Agriculture offered to fight the rise in price of sunflower oil and sugar in a new way. The agency was told about the need to create a special intervention fund for the purchase of sugar in 2022-2023, writes Forbes. The fund will sell a product at lower prices during periods of sharp cost growth. In addition, the Ministry of Finance considers an increase in export duty on sunflower oil.
Among the measures to combat prices also called benefits for sugar suppliers to Russia in 2022 and expanding the production of sunflower. The new proposals for curbing prices for products of the Ministry of Agriculture developed after the assignment of Vita Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko. Now the department is preparing to make them for consideration of the government.
Exporting duty on sunflower oil in Russia began to act from September 1. The timing of its action will be expired at the end of August 2022. The size of the collection “floating” – 70 percent of the difference between the base price (1000 dollars per ton) and indicative price (the average market price per month) minus $ 50 per ton.
The problem arose in the pandemic 2020. After the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin that the rise in prices for basic products cannot be explained by a pandemic, the government obliged manufacturers and trading networks to freeze prices for sugar and oil. The adjustment of the cost of sugar stopped on June 1, 2021, and oils – October 1. However, the head of the Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina still advised to abandon the administrative price limitation due to artificial distortion of price indicators and harm production.
At the same time, in November, Nabiullina stated that food inflation in the country had already reached two-digit values. Rosstat reported that in October the indicator for the first time in five years reached 8.13 percent. Sugar prices in annual terms rose even stronger – by 11.32 percent, and on vegetable oil – by 16.31 percent.