The Federation Council wants to oblige retail chains to sell goods from local manufacturers

The measure is aimed at developing the economy of the Russian region.

Andrey Kutepov, the head of the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy, has developed a bill that would oblige retail chains to put locally produced goods on the shelves without fail, a correspondent reports. DOPs.

It follows from the text of the document that retail chains want to oblige to provide shelf space for goods of local producers, as well as to indicate the geographical name or the name of the place of origin of the goods.

Kutepov himself called the bill a measure to support regional producers, which will not only help develop employment, but also improve the economic situation in them as a whole.

As specified in the explanatory note, recently, not only in large cities of Russia, but also in relatively small and remote settlements, small shops are replacing modern supermarkets, hypermarkets, discounters.

Chain stores have become the most common place to purchase products: among residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and other million-plus cities, this share reaches 83-84%, the senator specifies.

This leads to the exit of a large number of small enterprises from the retail market (primarily due to lack of competitiveness), which increases the monopolization of retail chains that are more competitive, including due to economies of scale, a unified procurement policy, more competent logistics and availability own distribution centers.

At the same time, in recent years, as Kutepov clarifies, the Russian market has seen a steady increase in the share of retail chains in the total volume of retail trade turnover. According to the senator, this figure for the whole of the Russian Federation increased from 15.1% in 2009 to 39.6% in 2022.

According to the proposed changes, economic entities will be able to independently decide which regional goods to present in their retail chains and in what volume. According to the senator, the innovations will support the sales of products of regional producers, which they had before the arrival of retail chains in the regions.