The department has no intentions to stop using the mechanisms of export duties on grain and sunflower seeds, said Deputy Minister Oksana Lut.
According to her, the cut-off price is adjusted once a year.
In addition, no measures aimed at working with the duty are planned to be used.
However, an important point was the change in the currency in which the duty is levied last June: instead of dollars, it became rubles.
In general, agrarians are beginning to gradually “get used” to this mechanism, because the duty has been in effect for the third season.
According to Loot, the department will work to take into account the costs of this season and, on the basis of them, calculate the amount of the export duty for the next season, when the crop obtained in the current season will be sold.
At the same time, in addition to the costs incurred, a number of other factors are taken into account: the size of the harvested crop, the exchange rate, world prices for agricultural products.
The official specifically stressed that there are no plans to get rid of export duties on sunflower seeds.
After all, it is harvested relatively little in the country — 29 million tons, while the processing capacity of this sunflower is at the level of 26-28 million tons.
With this in mind, there should be no problem in order to process almost the entire volume of raw materials on our own territory. True, there are difficulties associated with the fact that sunflower fields and oil extraction plants are unevenly distributed throughout the country.
For example, in the Far East there is not enough processing capacity, while in the center of the country there is a shortage of raw materials. However, the ministry is going to solve this problem.
Export duties ruin farmers
As Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko noted a couple of months ago, over 2 years grain duties have brought more than 200 billion rubles to the budget.
At the same time, these funds are used to distribute subsidies to agricultural producers, but in fact these subsidies cover no more than 25% of losses, Arkady Zlochevsky, President of the Russian Grain Union, believes.
In addition, the export duty leads to a drop in the income of farmers when selling their products not only on the foreign market, but also on the domestic market, since excess supply puts pressure on prices.
For example, this season in the Russian Federation, in any case, there will be huge carry-overs, even if it is possible to export 62 million tons of grain, although even this will be almost impossible.
As a result, manufacturers have little room for maneuver: the cost price is growing, and marginality is falling.
As Zlochevsky noted, the abolition of the duty would be able to «level the market», but so far it is unlikely that the Russian authorities will decide on such a step.
