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American HP and Japanese Fujitsu products may be excluded from the list of parallel imports. The Computing Machinery Consortium (ANO VT, unites a number of large Russian electronics manufacturers, including Aquarius, Yadro, Depo, etc.) asked the Ministry of Industry and Trade. This follows from a letter that the association sent on June 25 to Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Vasily Shpak.

A representative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade confirmed receipt of the letter, explaining that "it will be considered in due course." He also noted that the Ministry of Industry and Trade is constantly collecting proposals from industry associations to adjust the list of parallel imports.

In the case of the Consortium ANO of Computational mathematics initiative, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has repeatedly requested specific proposals on it, the source stressed. – The exclusion of products is possible if the required production volumes [in Russia] of analogues comparable in quality and consumer characteristics are confirmed.

What they want to exclude

ANO believes that it is necessary to exclude not brands (Apple, HP, etc.) from the list of parallel imports, but point-by-point types of devices. But the current system of HS codes, which are indicated in the customs declaration when importing products, does not allow this to be done, complains Svetlana Legostaeva, CEO of ANO VT. The code contains a group of different products, such as servers, computers, printers, etc.

This is not the first such proposal of the association. In April 2024, ANO VT proposed to the authorities to exclude smartphones, tablets and laptops of any brands from the list of goods allowed for parallel import to Russia in order to promote Russian manufacturers in retail.

Alexey Melnikov, managing partner of the IT holding Fplus, explained that the HS code 8471, which was proposed to be excluded in the association, includes servers, data storage systems, laptops, etc. "At the same time, the presence of a parallel import mechanism has an extremely negative effect on Russian manufacturers and largely discredits government support measures," he continued. "We are convinced that for the development of domestic production, the list of excluded brands should be significantly expanded."

HP has historically accounted for a large amount of b2b sales. Now HP and Fujitsu occupy a small share in all retail sales categories compared to 2022, the representative of M.Video-Eldorado notes. "This is due to the fact that the goods of these brands are supplied to our country only through parallel imports," he explained.

How Parallelism works

HP produces laptops, printers, PCs, etc., and Fujitsu – servers, laptops, peripherals, etc. ANO VT proposes to exclude from the list of gray imports (imports by the parallel import mechanism. –"Vedomosti") goods under the HS code of the EuroAsian Economic Union 8471. The nomenclature of this code includes computers and blocks, etc. But the lobbyists' proposal does not concern all electronics, but only those products "that either have Russian analogues or are not critical for consumers – in terms of equipment for which there are currently no Russian analogues," the letter from ANO VT notes.

Parallel import makes it possible to circumvent restrictions on the supply of products to the country, since it does not provide for the need to coordinate the import of goods with the copyright holder. This measure was taken in relation to a number of products after the withdrawal of foreign vendors from the Russian market. Among the departed electronics manufacturers are American Apple, Dell, HP, South Korean Samsung, Fujitsu and many others. If the company refuses official supplies to Russia and without being included in the list of parallel imports, such goods can enter our market only when imported by citizens for personal use.

~650,000 devices

made up the Russian corporate A4 laser printer market in Russia in 2023, according to Fplus estimates. In less than two years of operation of the parallel import mechanism, goods worth more than $70 billion were imported into Russia, said the then First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Andrei Belousov (since May 2024 - Minister of Defense) at a meeting of the Presidential Council for Strategic Development and National Projects in December 2023.

Analysts at GS Group, a contract electronics manufacturer, have estimated that parallel electronics imports in Russia have slowed down. For example, in 2023, the share of parallel laptop imports amounted to 33% of the total import volume, which is 20 percentage points less than in 2022, a company representative said. A similar trend is observed in the tablet market: the share of parallel imports of these devices decreased from 27% in 2022 to 15% in 2023.

"The parallel import tool has proved to be quite effective," Legostaeva told Vedomosti. "But our companies are actively developing, supplying a wide range of domestic computing equipment." "According to our experts, the products of the HP and Fujitsu brands in the computing systems group either have high–quality and competitive Russian analogues, or are not critical for consumers," she confirmed.

Is it possible to do without HP and Fujitsu

In 2023, the Russian printer market amounted to about 1.8 million devices, Alexander Surkov, founder of the Surkov Telegram channel about marketing, previously told Vedomosti. The Chinese Pantum accounted for 19%, HP – 16%, Japanese Kyocera, Canon and Epson – 10, 9 and 5%, respectively, and the Russian brand Katyusha – 3.8%. The volume of the Russian laptop market in 2023 increased by 11% to 3.4 million units, GS Group analysts estimated in January. In 2020, the four main laptop market leaders – HP, China's Lenovo and Taiwan's Asus and Acer – occupied 76% of the market, and in 2023 their share decreased to 25%.

According to M.video-Eldorado, HP analogues in printers are only among Chinese manufacturers (Pantum and Deli), which have already begun to replace premium Western brands. "Russian brands OSIO, Irbis, Digma, and F+ can currently replace HP in monoblocks and laptops only in the basic and medium segments, and there is no full–fledged replacement for premium and gaming solutions yet," the representative of the network continued.

If ANO VT proposes to exclude the simplest server solutions, the production or assembly of which from imported components in Russia has already been mastered by several companies, then in this segment the Russian market may well do without the products of these brands, according to Alexey Boyko, an independent analyst, author of the abloud62 Telegram channel. But the expert is not sure that the vacant place of HP and Fujitsu will be occupied by Russian, not Chinese manufacturers.

The Association of Trading Companies and Manufacturers of Household and Computer Equipment (RATEK, includes Yandex Market, Citylink, DNS, M.video-Eldorado, etc.) considers the offer of ANO VT harmful to the market. "It will lead to a narrowing of the assortment, and less choice means higher prices," explains Anton Guskov, a representative of RATEK. The country already has serious measures in place to support Russian electronics manufacturers, including in the form of preferences in public procurement, he concluded.

Source: https://www.vedomosti.ru/technology/articles/2024/06/28/1046730-biznes-poprosil-isklyuchit-tehniku-hp-i-fujitsu-iz-parallelnogo-importa?utm_campaign=newspaper_28_6_2024&utm_medium=email&utm_source=vedomosti