The legislation proposed by the government on state regulation of retail trade will be passed in its second and third readings on Wednesday, said Yevgeny Fyodorov, chairman of the State Duma’s Economic Policy and Entrepreneurship Committee.
On Monday, the committee approved a new version of the legislation, and the United Russia faction has decided that it will support it — even though the text of the new version of the legislation was only received from the government late Monday evening, a Duma source told Vedomosti.
The second reading of the legislation has been delayed several times because of a large number of revisions, and the presidential administration’s State Legal Directorate on Dec. 4 leveled several sharp criticisms against the version of the bill approved by First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov. The directorate called several of the bill’s provisions “dubious from a legal point of view” and said it presented an “unjustified increase of administrative burdens on business.”
Further, the directorate said, the legislation hardly even touches “questions of protecting the rights and legal interests of the consumer.” It leveled criticism on nearly all the basic provisions of the bill, including the limits placed on retailers: A ban on taking extra fees from suppliers in excess of 10 percent, a ban on retailers acquiring more stores if their local market share would exceed 35 percent.
Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin and Zubkov held negotiations on the bill throughout last week.
In the new version of the bill, the provisions on limiting fees and boundaries for expanding retail chains have remained unchanged. The only thing changed was an article about the maximum period for paying for delivered goods: the previous version set a 10-day period to pay for frozen beef, pork, fowl and milk — a provision that the directorate said placed “several producers and suppliers in deliberately lucrative conditions.”
In the new version, the 10-day period stays in force only for goods that expire in less than 10 days. Goods that can be held for more than 30 days should be paid off within 45 days, according to the new legislation.
The new bill will also go into effect later: Instead of Jan. 1, as proposed earlier, it will take effect Feb. 1. A source familiar with the document’s preparation said the delay was connected with the fact that the law must first be published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
The new bill is of “a higher quality” but isn’t a compromise, Kremlin aide Arkady Dvorkovich told Vedomosti. Nevertheless, he said the law will be signed by the president this year.
The White House turned out to be stronger than the Kremlin in the negotiation process, said Yevgeny Minchenko, a political analyst. The law conceals several contradictions in the current legislation, although it is unlikely that the president will use his veto: If there had been the desire to remove all the points of criticism, then the discussions would still be continuing.
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