World meat industry news

In spite of the strategy of the authorities, Russia is still unable to replace supplies of the main categories of imported products due to domestic production, including those prohibited for import under counter-sanctions in August 2014.

European suppliers were replaced by companies from other countries, and in a number of cases it is not about replacing, but about re-exporting the same, mostly European, "banned" products. The evidence of this situation are the figures of the Analytical Review run by the National Rating Agency (NRA).

How it started
In August 2014, an embargo was imposed on the import of certain categories of goods from Western countries into the country as a response to Western sanctions. The first ban on the supply of goods - meat, fish, dairy products, cheeses, vegetables, fruits - concerned the EU countries and the United States. A year later, the sanctions were extended to Albania, Liechtenstein, Iceland and Montenegro, and later to Ukraine.

Vision and reality
The dropping out volume of banned food products was planned to be replaced by Russian goods in accordance with the 2012 import substitution strategy. However, analysts believe that it was possible to do this only partially, and a significant part of the products are still imported from abroad, but from other countries.

The situation turned out to be a failure with the reduction of vegetable imports: it was envisaged that by 2020 vegetable imports would decrease by 70.3%, however, in fact, this category imports have decreased just by 27%. Due to the climate, Russia will stay a net importer of fruits and vegetables for a long time.

Re-export replacing sanctioned import
In a number of cases, supplies from countries that fell under Russian sanctions were replaced by the import of products from third countries. However, it follows from the NRA study that this was partially due to the re-export of the same products prohibited for direct import into Russia.

Government’s opinion
The Kremlin recognized the program of import substitution of products as successful. The goal of the import substitution program was to satisfy on its own the basic, and not all, needs of Russians in food products, the Kremlin explained. The program successfully coped with these tasks.