According to State Duma deputies, the export duty does not solve its problem, but it greatly limits the profits of farmers.
Currently, the duty has been reduced for the third week in a row, but this is due to the fall in world prices for wheat.
Before the new year, they reached $98 and almost broke the psychological mark of $100.
According to the FAO, global food prices are now down by about 0.6%, mainly due to harvests in the Southern Hemisphere.
However, neither increase nor decrease in world prices has practically no effect on farmers’ profits, because the duty is calculated according to the formula: 70% of the difference between $200 and the customs price (for wheat).
As a result, even the most astronomical price on the market does not allow Russian producers to make a big profit: it is almost entirely eaten up by the duty.
At the same time, costs are only growing: fuel, fertilizers, energy, equipment, and labor are becoming more expensive.
At the last meeting of the State Duma Committee on Agrarian Issues, the deputies expressed their concern: after all, farmers, squeezed by the “pincers” of duties, against the backdrop of growing costs, can generally reduce production volumes.
As a result, there will be a shortage of products, which certainly does not contribute to lower prices.
According to the deputies, over the past year, “thanks to” duties, farmers have lost up to 90 billion rubles.
By the way, the tendency to «expand» export duties attracts attention: now they are imposed not only on wheat, but also on corn, rapeseed, barley, sunflower and sunflower oil, soybeans.
A lot of money is being taken away from the producers of all these crops, and this reduces their desire to produce. Something needs to be done about this situation, a number of deputies express a similar opinion.
By the way, all these duties do not solve their main task: food inflation in Russia is not decreasing.
When will the subsidies be available?
According to Eduard Zernin, Chairman of the Board of the Union of Grain Exporters, it is too early to change the mechanism for calculating the duty: the markets are too volatile due to the pandemic and geopolitics.
However, what would be really good to do is to start paying subsidies. When the duty was introduced, they promised that all this money would be spent on nothing more than helping farmers.
But to date, most of them have not seen any subsidies.
According to Zernin, if you start paying them depending on the area of \u200b\u200bfarms or on the gross harvest, this can serve as an excellent motivation for businesses to continue working.
