Change in Legislation on the Regulation of Parallel Imports
The government is in the advanced stages of giving permission to allow parallel imports for certain categories of goods. In February, Head of the Laboratory Alexey Ivanov attended a meeting with First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov on this topic and a subsequent discussion with participant parties at the Federal Antimonopoly Service.
February 12th saw a meeting with First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov to discuss the list of goods that may be imported with special dispensation. The goods, which will be foremost in the category of the application of the international principle of the exhaustion of rights, will be drugs, and medical devices. Down the line, the government plans to expand the list to facilitate auto parts, cosmetics, and food trade. The audience with Shuvalov included not just representatives of the relevant ministries and government institutions, but also board members of the Eurasian Economic Commission, with which the Laboratory works closely.
"Discussion of this project should be in the public domain because it is of such high social significance. If the proposed mechanisms would reduce the price of essential medicines that are not produced in Russia, then it is necessary to do so. This could be another crisis management tool," said a government representative, as quoted in Kommersant.
On February 20, a discussion was held at the Federal Monopoly Service (FAS) with experts, manufacturers, and importers of drugs and medical devices. Following the request of the First Deputy Prime Minister, FAS gathered options on the pilot project of the legalisation of parallel imports. Under the auspices of Andrei Belyaninov of the Federal Customs Service, it is proposed to pass goods through specialised customs offices.
Alexey Ivanov also spoke at the discussion, referencing research he oversaw at Skolkovo in 2013: Skolkovo start-ups were unanimously in favour of the resolution of parallel imports. Advanced technology companies suffer from excessive prices for chemical-biological products and medical equipment under the existing conditions of restrictions of their delivery to Russia.
A member of the Skolkovo project and representative of the biological industry branch reports: "All the reagents of the large manufacturer Sigma-Aldrich, we order via the authorised dealer 'Chimmed'. In Russia, there remains a number of official suppliers, and the prices for reagents are all around the same level. The prices of all supplies in the European and American catalogues are between one-and-a-half and two times lower in terms of pricing than there are on the Russian market. The same situation exists with specialized equipment, such as the Bruker spectrometer. It is extremely difficult to buy equipment from abroad, and we don't undertake it ourselves. However, we had several cases of purchase through partner companies. Thus, we were able to buy on the American market an excellent resold chromatograph from Agilent. It cost just 1 million RUB, including delivery. If were were to buy a new device in Moscow from the official supplier, the cost would be 5 million RUB.