Russian grain exporters complain of financial and reputational losses due to increased inspections.
Several companies that sell Russian grain abroad admitted that large consignments of grain have begun to be detained at customs. The delay is often up to 10 days.
This causes many problems:
- You have to pay for the freight at the ports when the transportation is carried out by water.
- The company is unable to fulfill the current contracts on time.
The latter is especially dangerous.
As the chairman of the Union of Grain Exporters Eduard Zernin notes, at the moment Russia has managed to «wrestle» the leadership in the field of grain exports from competitors: Canada, the EU, the United States.
Moreover, the victory was not easy. If now it turns out that buyers of Russian grain run the risk of not receiving it on time, then leadership can easily be lost.
Why is the customs detaining the goods?
Vice-chairman of the Russian Grain Union Alexander Korbut reassures: delays at customs are not yet a mass phenomenon. Yes, customs slows down some goods, but not totally, but selectively.
In his opinion, one of the reasons for such delays is the beginning holidays in the EU (Catholic Christmas). All exporters strive to have time to «push» their grain shipments before the holidays.
Here at the customs and «traffic jams» appear.
The second reason, already more serious, is the new laws on quotas and duties, which will begin to operate in the Russian Federation in a couple of months.
Customs is preparing for the fact that soon it will have to control the weight of the transported cargo to take into account quotas and calculate duties. At the moment she is «learning» to do it.
Well, in the role of «training simulators» are the very same cars and ships detained for several days.
Most of all, exporters are afraid that the customs will give an order to unload the ship or wagon in order to arrange a recheck of the transported weight. But so far there is no information about who somewhere came to this case.
Usually everything is limited to a long wait.
And the need to somehow explain to foreign buyers: Russia did not fulfill its obligations under the contract on time due to its own laws.
