The White House has expanded protectionist measures to stimulate the production of electronics and medical equipment in the Russian Federation — the ban on public procurement has been extended to four types of imported computers, microchips, smart and chip cards and lamps. They will simply not be allowed to bid. The tightening also affected an extensive list of industrial equipment and medical devices and products, including tomographs, ultrasound devices, X-ray complexes, heart monitors. Previously, such imports were blocked under the “third extra” scheme (if there are two offers of Russian equipment), now- “second extra”. Market participants doubt that the motivation of Russian producers to progress will be preserved with such guaranteed demand and lack of competition.The White House supported the idea of the Ministry of Industry and Trade to expand protectionism — the list of bans on public procurement of foreign industrial products (introduced by government decree No. 616, now it contains not 125, but 132 positions) was expanded by government decree No. 1432 published yesterday to:According to the document, only goods from the registers of Russian industrial and radio — electronic products will be considered Russian-without an extract from them, suppliers will not be allowed to bid, and state customers will need permission from the Ministry of Industry and Trade to purchase imports.The relevant deputy head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Vasily Shpak, called the document “a logical continuation of the import substitution policy,” admitting that “the act was difficult, it met huge resistance on the way.” This is partly due to the inclusion in the document of a rather complicated restriction on purchases of imported medical equipment and industrial equipment. Earlier, the “third extra” rule was fixed for this sector (refusal to import if there are two Russian proposals). Now 45 types of medical nomenclature, including tomographs, X-ray equipment, ultrasound, heart monitors, ventilators, defibrillators, etc., are transferred under the “second extra”rule. Obviously, the approval of the project by the Ministry of Health means that there is a sufficient supply of such domestic equipment in the Russian Federation, but the closure of the market from external suppliers raises the question of motivation for domestic manufacturers with guaranteed demand for products and no competitors. However, as the head of the company “Meditex” Andrey Vilensky notes, after the appearance of the “third extra” rule, state customers learned to circumvent prohibitions by manipulating the public procurement procedure, for example, combining lots, concluding life-cycle contracts or leasing equipment. In addition, most of the major foreign manufacturers of medical equipment have already localized their production in the Russian Federation in one way or another. The co-chairman of the All-Russian Union of Patients, Yuri Zhulev, is concerned that, even if new patientsIf a small number of patients suffer, it will be impossible to justify this by the needs of the development of domestic industry.The expansion of the list of purchases that are transferred under the “second extra” rule also affects industrial products-formally, its list has been expanded from 13 to 170 positions, but in fact it is mainly a detailed list of electronics, optics and electrics, including fiber-optic cables, specialized machine tools, as well as irons, lamps and microwave ovens. Another innovation was the requirement to indicate the degree of localization of Russian and Eurasian products (if a point-based evaluation system is installed for these purposes; however, it has not yet been approved).Oleg Sapozhkov, Anastasia Manuylova
