Import substitution or not? Ministry of Industry and Trade plans to reset import duties on microelectronics

From September 1, 2015, the Ministry of Industry and Trade will reset import customs components to radio-electronic devices. At the same time, a reduction in duties is required to be coordinated with the WTO on information technology - Russia joined this organization in 2013, Vedomosti reports. The representative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade said that the decision to reset the duties was made by the commission of the Eurasian Economic Union.

This decision was made after the corresponding proposal was made by Senator Viktor Rogotsky, having received the support of the Chair of the Federation Council, Valentina Matvienko. Rogotsky said that now in Russia there is a duty in the amount of 5 to 17.5% on the import of electronic components, but there is no duty on the finished equipment (servers, desktop PCs, etc.), while the components for such equipment are imported without duties .

Recall that back in 2012, the Eurasian Economic Commission reduced the duties on electronic components. So, until 2012, the duty on the import of integrated circuits, diodes, transistors, photosensitive components and capacitors was 10%, resistors were subject to a duty of 15%. In July 2012, a decision was made to reduce duties on the first category of goods to 3.3%, and on the second to 5%. In 2014, integrated circuits were imported to Russia in the amount of $ 776 million, diodes, transistors and photosensitive components $ 345.7 million, capacitors $ 78 million, and resistors $ 45.4 million.
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According to Alexei Dianov, a representative of the Micron plant, resetting duties will have a negative impact on domestic producers. Dianov believes that the reduction in duties goes against the course of import substitution. At the same time, the duties are reset to those categories of goods produced by Micron.

The head of the GS Group, Andrei Bezrukov, supports the idea of ​​zeroing import duties on imported components and introducing import duties on final products. According to Bezrukov, it is difficult for domestic manufacturers of household appliances and electronics to compete with foreign counterparts, despite the fact that such equipment is not inferior to foreign counterparts in consumer characteristics.

Svetlana Appalonova, chairman of the Association of Electronics and Appliance Manufacturers, is confident that reducing the cost of components by a few percent will have a positive effect on the cost price of household appliances and electronics, the price of goods produced in this case will be lower for domestic consumers.