PRESS: Business unions complain to Putin about new fees

MOSCOW, Nov 20 (PRIME) – Russian business unions have complained to President Vladimir Putin that they will have to pay over 100 billion rubles of new fees under a 2018–2020 budget draft, Vedomosti business daily reported on Monday.

The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Delovaya Rossiya, Opora Russii, and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry told Putin in a letter that the government, which has included three new non-tax payments in the budget draft, is failing to keep the promise not to increase the tax burden until the end of 2018 given by the president in 2014, the business daily said.

The payments include a duty on imports of machine-tools and equipment, a 7% utilization fee for equipment in the heavy and power industries, and a 25% investment fee in sea ports. The government also increased several existing fees, for instance, the car scrappage fee will be raised to 15%.

Businessmen think that this will undermine investment and increase the cost of capital goods and end products in all industries. The increase of the scrappage fee will bump up the price of imported equipment, and imports of cars will contract even further after falling almost fivefold in 2012–2016, Vedomosti reported citing to officials of car producers.

The State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, approved the budget draft in the second out of three required readings on November 17, but practice shows that it is already almost impossible to change the budget, the business daily reported quoting Alexandra Suslina of consulting firm Economic Expert Group.

But a member of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs told Vedomosti that although it would be tough to cancel the payments, stopping approval of regulations that underpin them is possible.

(59.6325 rubles – U.S. $1)

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