The Ministry of Industry and Trade continues to seek expansion of industrial control

The Ministry of Industry and Trade insists on regaining control over the quality of industrial products, citing the growing volumes of counterfeit and counterfeit products that “threaten the health and lives of consumers.” So far, the department’s attempts to solve the problem systematically and return to Rosstandart the powers to control the circulation of industrial products that were lost due to the control and supervisory reform have not been successful. Now it is proposed to conduct an experiment to control certain types of products – such as cables, radiators, building mixtures – without any amendments to the legislation, with a gradual expansion of their list. The experimental format became possible due to a loophole in counter-sanction legislation, previously used mainly to reduce control due to the unavailability of a number of technologies: special conditions can be introduced until the end of 2024.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade published on regulation.gov.ru a draft government resolution on conducting an experiment in the Russian Federation to return state control over certain types of products. The list includes building mixtures and mortars, central heating radiators and cables, but the project provides for the possibility of expanding this list. According to the project, Rosstandart, which is subordinate to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, will have to exercise control powers, which has the infrastructure for this (interregional territorial departments), and specialists in the field of supervision, and experts.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade explains the need for an experiment by the fact that after the CND reform in 2022, products that are subject to 13 of the 47 technical regulations of the EAEU, as well as those included in the list of products subject to mandatory certification and declaration of conformity, are not covered by control. This leads to the fact that manufacturers are not motivated to comply with mandatory safety requirements, opportunities for unfair competition appear and the share of counterfeit and counterfeit products is growing, which creates risks for the life and health of citizens. For example, the use of low-quality building mixtures can lead to the collapse of residential buildings and schools, cables and conductors – to fires, radiators – to flooding and accidents. In the summary report to the draft resolution, the Ministry of Industry and Trade refers to data from associations: in 2021–2022, with the cessation of scheduled and unscheduled checks of cable compliance with safety parameters, the share of such counterfeit products increased from 15% to 40%, and in construction the volume of counterfeit products at the end of 2023 could reach 70 %.

We note, however, that the last figure, taking into account the traditional seasonal increase in the volume of construction work by the end of the year, should either indicate the unsafety of almost all the projects that are currently being commissioned, and be confirmed by a wave of construction accidents, or indicate that the quality of the identified “falsification” in The Russian Federation is little inferior to legal products.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has already tried to solve the problem of the lack of quality control of products produced in the Russian Federation systematically – it was about amendments to a number of laws on the introduction, from March 1, 2024, of a new type of state control over compliance by manufacturers with mandatory requirements. The Ministry of Industry and Trade yesterday did not answer Kommersant’s question about the fate of the bill, but it was already noted in the materials for it that the idea of ​​returning control was introduced into the government apparatus overseeing the CND reform several times since the fall of 2022, but was not supported.

A new attempt by the Ministry of Industry and Trade to return partial control over the most problematic types of products became possible thanks to a loophole in counter-sanction legislation (46-FZ). It contains rules that allow the government, without legislative changes, to make decisions on the specifics of organizing and implementing types of state supervision in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Note that such a right was required for other purposes – so that the government could flexibly reduce the control burden on enterprises affected by sanctions. The office of Dmitry Grigorenko, who oversees the reform of the Communist Party of People’s Commissars, only said yesterday that the document had not yet been submitted for consideration; the Ministry of Industry and Trade did not answer questions about its conflict with the ideology of the reform.

It should be noted that the problem of low-quality products has worsened with the departure of foreign suppliers from the Russian market and a decrease in the level of competition in certain markets. Moreover, in 2022–2023, the regulators themselves were forced to temporarily remove a number of requirements for Russian-made output, including in the automotive industry. Due to the change of suppliers, industry suffers both as a consumer of low-quality products due to the lack of alternatives in the markets, and as a supplier – due to unequal conditions of competition with unscrupulous manufacturers. To solve this problem, the State Duma is also discussing a bill to tighten control over organizational standards (STO) and technical specifications (TS) – they contain requirements for products, are developed by manufacturers independently, but as a result, products produced in accordance with such documents often do not correspond to the specified requirements.

Diana Galieva, Oleg Sapozhkov