The Kremlin is able to ban many exports of food to protect it from rising prices

Russia has warned that it intends to expand its exports to food aid in the wake of a recent rise in prices that forced the Kremlin to pay the domestic price for major commodities such as sugar and flour, the country’s finance minister.

Maxim Reshetnikov, finance minister, told the Financial Times that Russia, one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat, is considering how to better supplement its exports and protect home buyers from rising prices.

The international price of food for the United Nations has arrived very high for about a decade in May, it is rising by about 40% per year. Food prices are a major issue for the Kremlin because 20m, or one in seven Russians, live in extreme poverty, and the cost and inflation are high.

In December, Vladimir Putin ordered officials to step down temporary price adjustments on major foods such as sunflower oil and pasta. The number of wheat sales was announced earlier this year and exports this month. Moscow said the move needed to be tackled with declining budgets that have made important things more accessible to many.

Reshetnikov said Russia could expand its export-oriented ways, including the imposition of imminent tariffs on “export operations” in other areas, if prices continued to rise. In terms of domestic consumption, Russia was spending a lot of money on prices but continues to provide other resources, such as bread and flour.

“There is no guarantee that food prices around the world will stabilize and increase,” Reshetnikov said. “Any issue of predicting the harvest could start. . . another nutritional conference, so we are always on the lookout for them and help them when needed. ”

Export curbs, which Reshetnikov called the wood “absorber absorber”, also mean encouraging domestic producers to spend more money. “This is one of the things we get and grow by adding new prices – wheat moves livestock farming, pastoralism drives milk production, and so on,” he said.

Russia only exported major foods such as wheat after 2014, when it banned most western foods due to approval from the US and the EU and then started more intensive farming. Commodities such as wheat account for about 8% of Russia’s $ 419bn exports in 2019, according to information from the World Trade Organization.

However, the country is still in dire need of infrastructure to assemble a market similar to the US or Europe. This will allow them to buy more expensive items by adding items, saving more and freeing them as needed.

However, the limits on which they want to export will help the food industry, with officials saying the recent rise in prices is due to an increase in Chinese importers who want to pay more. Sugar prices rose 65 percent in Russia last year.

In contrast, government officials say Russia’s food prices are rising sharply in what Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has called “the greed of manufacturers and retailers”. This has created fears that terrorism will spread throughout the region.

More than three dozen Russian businessmen say they feel safe on the unsubstantiated charges filed by the government, according to a presidential investigation last month; In addition, 18% of prosecutors agreed.

The situation is so widespread that one MP joked at a Russian economic summit in St Petersburg last week that “we took the first step. [to an investment climate] – three days to attend the meeting and no one has been arrested ”.

Reshetnikov said any future business ventures could be tax-exempt.

“If you lose all your benefits, no matter how long, in terms of innovation, development, research, and so on, it is one thing. If you pay, that’s fine [ . . .] “It is possible that some taxes will be better for raising money,” he said.