Electronics dropped out of the register – Newspaper Kommersant No. 61 (7506) dated 04/10/2023

The volume of the register of Russian radio electronics of the Ministry of Industry and Trade unexpectedly halved, market participants told Kommersant and confirmed in the ministry. This happened after April 1 due to the introduction of a point system for evaluating the “domesticity” of electronics. The Ministry of Industry and Trade expects that companies will “catch up” with the requirements, the register will be restored and even expanded. But the repricing of electronics could drag on for months, making it harder for companies to participate in government procurement.

In April, the products of more than half of electronics manufacturers were excluded from the register of radio-electronic products of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Maxim Koposov, director of Promobit, told Kommersant. According to him, this is due to the launch in the fall of 2022 of a point system to determine the level of “domesticity” of radio electronics. The fact is that until March 31, electronics manufacturers could be in the register according to the old rules, and after April 1, only equipment that scored the required number of points remained there. Now there are more than 4 thousand products in the register, and before April 1 there were 7.7 thousand of them, Kommersant was told in the Ministry of Industry and Trade. “Kommersant” studied the registry and at the time of writing the note did not find the electronics “Ricor Electronics”, Yadro, ICL, etc. in it.

In September 2022, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin approved a draft resolution on a scoring system for determining the level of “domesticity” of radio electronics (regulated by the 719th government decree). For each technological operation in the production in the Russian Federation, the company receives points, with a sufficient number of which the equipment is included in the register. To obtain an act on the origin of products, you need to contact the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, on the basis of which the Ministry of Industry and Trade makes a conclusion. Electronics from the register receives preferences for public procurement (see Kommersant of September 15).

Prior to this, the recognition of domestic electronics was carried out according to the ad valorem principle: the cost of Russian components within a unit should have exceeded the cost of foreign ones.

The Association of Developers and Manufacturers of Electronics confirms the problem: when extending the conclusions on the confirmation of the Russian origin of products, a number of members of the association encountered the fact that the Ministry of Industry and Trade does not accept the conclusion of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The Ministry of Industry and Trade says that now the CCI is considering more than 2.7 thousand applications to confirm the production of products in Russia. “Manufacturers are ready to work according to the new rules, and the register will expand significantly,” the ministry says.

But manufacturers emphasize that the process is very slow. “We submitted an application to the Ministry of Industry and Trade in advance, but we still receive a response that it is under consideration,” says Boris Ivanov, vice president of laptop manufacturer Rikor Electronics. Since the beginning of the year, there has been a procedure for extending the conclusions for the entire product portfolio of the company, now there are three products left for which acts have been issued by experts, they are at the final stage of consideration, they say in Yadro. “We hope to receive conclusions on the extension in the near future,” they noted. The CCI, ICL, and Aquarius did not respond to Kommersant’s requests.

The exclusion of the products of a number of domestic companies has already led to the fact that they cannot supply equipment to state customers, says a Kommersant source in a Russian electronics manufacturer. “Because of this, including our company, it cannot participate in public procurement as a supplier of Russian equipment, for this it is necessary that the entry in the register be up-to-date at the time of filing an application for participation in the auction,” he notes.

The founder and chief designer of Aquarius, Alexander Kalinin, calls the current difficulties technical: according to the logic of the regulator, the registry should, on the contrary, expand, and “everything is moving towards this,” given the lack of a requirement for a Russian processor in the technology. He does not see serious risks of losing large government orders by players who have not yet entered the register: “Large tenders for the purchase of electronics, as practice shows, are formed in the second half of the year, closer to August. Companies by this date, I think, will have time to re-enter the register.”

The reduction of the register will continue: there are still many companies in it that have entered it without passing the assessment according to the point system, objecting to the managing partner of the F + tech Group of Companies Alexei Melnikov. “Not everyone was ready for this, and now they will have to go through the entire registration process again, which may take several months and not be as successful, as there is a risk of losing points due to the insufficient level of localization and the number of operations performed on the territory of the country” he says.

Timofey Kornev, Nikita Korolyov