Growing Prices for Foodstuffs Become Inevitable

 

Yesterday in Moscow, on the results of "round table" in which senators and deputies of the State Duma as well as leading experts of the branch participated was recognized - foodstuffs will rise in price and the rise will be essential. We shall say, significant growth of wholesale prices for meat and meat products is predicted in the nearest 2-3 months. At that meat will rise in price in any case as its largest manufacturers Argentina and Brazil have essentially limited export. Most likely in Russia the prices will grow more than on 20%. Thus, in 2007 the beef in Russia rose in price on 5,8%, pork on 4,9%. Prices for fowl broke a kind of a record - they grew on 13%.

- In the country which has purposefully ruined own agricultural production and consumes up to 80% of import meal, to predict a rise in price of foodstuffs in connection with conjuncture of the world market is very simple, - editor-in-chief of FORUM.msk Anatoly Baranov considers. - Factor of food safety in our country is absent at all. On a background of economically extremely dependent population which on the whole receives absolutely small incomes sharp rise in price for foodstuffs will have the most negative consequences. The average Russian, unlike the average European cannot redistribute family budget, having reduced, for example, charges for the rest or car for the benefit of meal - lion's share of his incomes goes on it. He can either start simply undereating or, that is more probable, to lower sharply quality of the allowance. Consequences - the most obvious and in very near prospect. Even so there is high degree of morbidity, low average life expectancy and extremely unsatisfactory parameters of children health in Russia.

In opinion of the vice-president of Council of Federation Committee on agrarian - food policy and fisheries industry Sergey Lisovsky, inactivity of some federal departments, in particular the Ministry of Finance and МEDT led to rise in prices in the food market of the country. The senator considers that if these ministries would taken real measures on protection of domestic market of foodstuffs against negative consequences from rise in prices in the world as a whole, sharp rise in price for foodstuffs in autumn of the last year would be possible to avoid.

- I remember Sergey Lisovsky as instructor of Baumansky district committee of Komsomol in Moscow, organizer of fashionable discos, showman, PR manager and carrier of the well-known box from under the copier with half of a million dollars during Yeltsin's elections, - Anatoly Baranov recollected. - Then he somehow sharply left PR, if memory does not escapes me, through a pre-trial detention center and was engaged in henhouses business in the Tula area. Well, now he returned to policy already as large expert in agriculture. A good fellow, certainly, but to what degree is possible to trust his expert estimations? Though, certainly, if to compare to "experts" of MEDT, Lisovsky is simply Hayek and Freedman in one person. Though how it's possible for foodstuffs not to rise in price if only in the Moscow area lately prices for mineral fertilizers have grown on 228%, while forages on 44%? 

According to the managing director on corporate relations of the company X5 Retail Group, manager of the Russian grocery retail networks "Pyaterochka" and "Crossroads" Jury Kobaladze, prices for products will continue to grow as it is caused by objective tendencies in the world food market.

- I remember Коbaladze as interesting journalist and the general of a state security, - Anatoly Baranov recollected.-, Certainly, it is very interesting to me to know opinion of this clever person but whether he became the large expert in the field of wholesale - retail trade in foodstuffs long time ago? It's also interesting to me to listen to Serdyukov, what he thinks about the reform of armed forces but hardly he understands these questions very deeply. Golikova in the post of Semashko looks quite glamour but questions of treatment and preventive maintenance of diseases in her narration interest me, so to say, not very much. Though both Serdyukov and Коbaladze could tell something on this theme.

"Unfortunately, all questions of the state importance in today's Russia are solved by nonspecialists, - Anatoly Baranov continued. - For this reason such simple thing as investment in own agriculture was not interesting to anybody till the moment when it's too late. There were money but it didn't come somehow to a mind that domestic carrot was all the same more favourable than the Dutch one. It's won't be possible to replace Dutch carrot with domestic at once, even for very big money - time is necessary for it to grow. While the cow grows even longer, than carrot. It's absolutely precise that no adequate state measures will be opposed to a world rise in price for products and consequences for population will be the most depressing. There is no and there will be no state policy in the field of foodstuffs, though under recommendations of IMF of the end of 90th years agriculture was recommended as accumulator of a superfluous labour and factor of internal stability for the state. Crediting of a village which goes actively during the last years has ended in enrichment of officials, turns in rural branches of banks but has not led to appreciable revival of agriculture production. It's more profitable for the fine manufacturer to "eat out" the credit, than to invest it into business and then come across necessity to sell production below prime cost - that is dictatorship of the purchaser. Farther it will be even worse because nothing will change for the best... "