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The Ministry of Industry and Trade has prepared an updated version of the list of goods that can be imported into Russia by parallel import. As follows from the order signed by the first Deputy Minister Vasily Osmakov, the department did not take into account the proposal of Russian electronics manufacturers who advocated limiting the parallel import of foreign equipment into the country. The list includes products from Acer, Asus, IBM, Dell, HP and other vendors. A copy of the document is at the disposal of Vedomosti, its authenticity was confirmed by two sources in companies in the electronics market and one interlocutor in the profile association.

A representative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade explained to Vedomosti that "taking into account the proposals received from manufacturers and customers," an analysis is underway of whether it is necessary to exclude "servers and data storage systems (DSS)" from the list of parallel imports. Such a decision "can be made on the basis of reasonable proposals for specific brands," if they are confirmed by data from "the production of similar domestic goods," he explained. "At the same time, we note that such data from manufacturers have not been received by the Ministry of Industry and Trade," the source said.

The fact that the Ministry of Industry and Trade approved the updated version of the list, at the end of July, Osmakov said in a conversation with RIA Novosti on the sidelines of the Russia –Africa forum. He promised that the order would be sent to the Ministry of Justice in the near future. Osmakov then added that this is not the final type of the list, the work  on it continues and the next version may appear in 2-3 months.

Parallel import involves the import of original goods into the country without the permission of the copyright holder or manufacturer. In Russia, this measure began to take effect on March 29, 2022 in response to Western sanctions. In September, the mechanism was extended to 2023.

The volume of parallel imports from May to December 2022 will amount to $ 20 billion, according to the Federal Customs Service.

In addition to electronics brands, the list of products for parallel import includes manufacturers of cars (Porsche, Jaguar, Rolls-Royce, etc.), alcohol, clothing, furniture, sports equipment, etc. By the end of 2022, the volume of parallel imports exceeded $ 20 billion, said the head of the Federal Customs Service (FCS) Vladimir Bulavin. According to him, a total of 2.4 million tons of goods were imported, mainly cars, machine tools and equipment.

In early June 2023, Kommersant, citing sources, wrote that the Ministry of Industry and Trade was considering the possibility of restricting parallel imports of products from more than 20 foreign manufacturers of computer equipment to Russia and that a regulatory act had already been prepared. With a proposal to exclude HPE, Acer, Asus, PureStorage, Basler, MSI, Delta Electronics, Palit, Palo Alto, Quanta and Schneider Electric equipment from parallel imports, ANO Consortium Computing Machinery (ANO VT; unites Yadro, Aquarius, Kraftway, etc.) addressed the Ministry of Industry and Trade, wrote "Kommersant".

The Ministry of Economy, one of the interlocutors of the newspaper clarified, considered a more extensive list: IBM, Dell, NetApp, Pure Storage, Fusitsu, HP, Xfusion, Inspur, Cisco, Hitachi, Arista, Delta Electronics, Oracle, Quanta Supermicro.

But, as follows from the updated version of the document, these brands remained on the list. In addition, it still lists products from manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung, Intel, Gigabyte, BenQ, ARM, etc.

In response to a request from Vedomosti, Svetlana Legostaeva, General Director of ANO VTB, told Vedomosti that the organization still supports the idea of reducing foreign computing equipment supplied by parallel imports. But the ANO proposes to revise the mechanism and considers it more effective not to reduce the number of brands, but to limit the supply of specific types of foreign equipment, she added. According to the participants of ANO VT, it would be advisable to limit the parallel import of low-performance single-processor and dual-processor servers, as well as data storage servers, Legostaeva continued.

«We are talking about the simplest equipment, which has been successfully produced by domestic companies in due volume for several years and which does not need to be replaced by foreign analogues," she added. As Legostaeva clarified, it is premature to prohibit the parallel import of high-performance quad-processor and blade servers, high-performance hardware and software complexes and storage systems (data storage servers).

In the new edition of the order of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, it is proposed to explicitly state that the import of products from the list without the consent of the copyright holder is not a violation of the rights to these results of intellectual activity and means of individualization and, therefore, does not entail the application of liability measures, the partner of the Pen bar association notes & Paper Sergey Uchitel. Taking into account the fact that the proposed measure completely legalizes the import of products from the list, the abuse of unscrupulous persons who will try to import non-original goods in the general flow bypassing the procedures of lawful import is not excluded, the lawyer believes. Copyright holders, in turn, will find it more difficult to track violations, Mr. Uchitel added.

Some of the experts interviewed by Vedomosti support the decision of the Ministry of Industry and Trade to leave foreign manufacturers on the list, believing that Russian equipment is currently unable to fully meet the needs of the market. While domestic manufacturers cannot create solutions competing in reliability and performance, it is important to preserve the possibility of using modern technology, says Ruslan Permyakov, deputy director of the Competence Center of the NTI "Technologies of Trusted Interaction" at the Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Radio Electronics. In his opinion, the Ministry of Industry and Trade will exclude foreign brands of equipment from parallel imports only if Russian manufacturers can get closer to competitors in terms of basic performance indicators. But if we are talking about equipment with a Russian processor and memory, then this is unlikely to happen in the next five years, he added.

Russian manufacturers and officially operating foreign vendors are already quite capable of closing a number of sectors, for example, such as laptops, smartphones and a number of others, said Alexey Melnikov, managing partner of F+ tech-Marvel Group. According to him, the revision of the list will increase the collection of taxes that are now paid in countries participating in parallel imports, and will also give an impetus to the localization of production in Russia.

In Russia, it is not yet possible to offer all the goods that are in demand, only at the expense of local production, says a representative of RATEK (includes M.video-Eldorado, Citylink, Huawei and others.) Anton Guskov. According to him, Russian manufacturers do not have sufficient capacities and production volumes, in addition, the price of domestic electronics raises questions. According to the expert, this issue requires more thorough study and discussion with participants of the consumer market, including representatives of retail trade.

"It is possible to introduce bans, but as a result it will turn out that retailers have nothing to trade," Guskov warns. "Russian producers will be helped not by bans, but by healthy competition, as well as assistance and subsidies from the market and the state."

Source: https://www.vedomosti.ru/technology/articles/2023/07/31/987846-minpromtorg-ostavil-inostrannuyu-elektroniku-v-perechne-tovarov-parallelnogo-importa?utm_campaign=newspaper_1_8_2023&utm_medium=email&utm_source=vedomosti