Andrey Slepnev: "Labelling of goods in the EAEU has proved its efficiency"

This was stated by Andrey Slepnev, Minister in charge of Trade of the Eurasian Economic Commission, after considering the development of the system for labelling goods with identification means at the June 27 meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Minsk.

Since 2019, a total of about 274 billion commodity items have been labeled in the Eurasian Economic Union. The proven effects are market regularization, reduced volume of counterfeit products, an increased number of lawful companies, growing profitability of bona fide producers and increased budget receipts", said Andrey Slepnev.

The effect of labelling is confirmed by the data of the EAEU countries. For example, in Armenia, the increase in the number of lawful producers and importers of goods amounted to 7%. In Kazakhstan, the turnover of counterfeit tobacco products decreased by $24.7 million. In the Russian Federation, the market regularization growth reached 22% for dairy products, 36% for light industry goods, 18% for footwear, 43% for perfumes.

"The Member States' budgets have also benefited significantly from the introduction of labelling. The increase in tax and duty revenues is observed across all countries and directly depends on the number of categories of goods for which labelling is introduced in each country," said Andrey Slepnev.

For example, in Russia, where the maximum number of categories of goods are labeled, the additional budget revenues from the sale of labeled products amounted to $15 billion, while in Kyrgyzstan to $68 million. In Belarus, where national labelling was previously in effect, which significantly regularized the market even before the introduction of the all-Union rules, the additional budget revenues reached $4.64 million.

The next step will be further improvement of the labelling system to better combat illegal products. 

"The first priority is to strengthen the role of national labelling systems for controlling the legality of origin and safety of goods," emphasized Andrey Slepnev.