Realities and prospects of "parallel imports"
This week, reports began to appear in the press that from April 1, Kazakhstan will launch some kind of electronic foreign trade monitoring system, which is designed to control the movement of sanctioned goods. News has already been widely dispersed in terms of resources, and given that problems in the field of importing goods to Russia from Turkey were actively discussed before, apparently, there is a need to look at the situation from different angles.
Cross-border logistics is a rather peculiar sphere. Logisticians, brokers, and in some industries, traders, are not particularly eager to discuss the issues of their industry in the media. As an example, we can cite the “grain deal” that has already set its teeth on edge, which everyone, except, perhaps, the participants in this market, managed to comment on.
The author himself does not consider such a position, by the way, worthy of imitation (Kazakhstan and the policy of sanctions. What lessons should we learn), because in addition to other “sanctions”, there are still questions and problems of importing such products as electronic components, the same drones, elements of drones, etc. Sooner or later, signals like those from Turkey or Kazakhstan will simply force our market to develop some kind of consolidated strategy, and together with the state.
Let's begin with story with the monitoring of sanctions re-export in Kazakhstan did not begin in March of this year, but at the beginning of the summer of last year, when Astana introduced the requirement to issue export invoices. And there was also such a document as the Order "On approval of the rules for the implementation of a pilot project to record the movement of certain types of goods when they are exported from the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the territory of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus».
It may be recalled that even at last year's SPIEF-2022 K.-J. Tokayev unequivocally stated that he was not officially going to violate the sanctions regime. The resonance from this statement, as well as from the draft order, was serious, and the text was removed from the official sites, but the removal does not mean that the project itself was not underway. It was frankly, in fact, dragged on for a year, and the whole question was already then only when it would be completely beyond the power to pull.
This applies to Turkish transit even to a greater extent, since Turkey, although not directly a member of the European Union, is a member of the European Customs Union with all the ensuing compliance requirements in the design of the movement of goods and databases. The fact that the problems surfaced only by March is a direct consequence of the fact that not all manufacturers in Europe themselves sought to strictly comply with the sanctions regime in order not to lose income, as well as the bureaucratization of the European system.
What one had to read or hear on the air on this topic, especially in terms of Baltic transportation, such as “replace the package of documents”, sounds wonderful, but has little to do with real practice. Well, persuade the carrier with the euro-license to "replace the documents." One-time passage of goods or the organization of certain streams in this way, of course, is possible, but in the end, all conversations rest on several understandable schemes: this is import into the territory of a particular country, re-registration of cargo and its shipment to the Russian Federation, or import to Serbia, customs clearance and customs clearance in the same place and again transfer for subsequent re-export. Further, it is already possible to maneuver with TN VED / HS codes, prices and commissions.
It would be simply surprisingly naive to think that all these manipulations are some kind of sacraments for the customs services of a particular country. Or what, the inspection service does not see the product markings? In principle, everything can be imported, exported and transported in the EU, but everything has not only its own price, but also channels that never assumed that they would be a road with a wide public movement, the western Ukrainian border has always been an exception - " private sector". Similarly, to put it mildly, the long-term use of the so-called. "fictitious transit". Simply because the closing of the deal will sooner or later run into the loyalty of structures in the final jurisdiction. And complaining here about the fact that our neighbors (even in the EAEU) are somehow especially pro-Western is not worth it.
The European Commissions, which today are a bunch of frank Russophobes, are themselves quite monstrous and clumsy. But the tools they can bring to bear are not really limited to simple solutions. The more acute the confrontation on the Ukrainian front approaches, the more the West receives signals similar to the visit of the head of China to Moscow, the closer will be the moment when this bureaucracy will start the practice of directly orchestrating patent law within the framework of WTO agreements.
It is one thing when framework bans are imposed, and another when a particular manufacturer of goods is required to send out a ban on the re-export of goods under their trademarks and their own certificates. Last year, when talking about this topic, colleagues basically dismissed it, they say, it is so deep and complicated that simply no one will deal with it.
But over the past year, we have already seen more than once what seemed to be beyond the bounds, and each time we are convinced that there are no borders for the Russophobic European bureaucracy. The WTO has a system of TRIPS agreements. According to these agreements, in which most countries are involved, as in the WTO system itself, the right holder has the right to set limits on the distribution of his products. And speaking in Russian, the right to allow or prohibit exports and re-exports to specific countries. These are not sanctions as such, this is precisely part of the policy of the copyright holder. In this case, the right holder sends official notifications to customs as part of certain procedures, and the customs authorities cannot, but are obliged to block the movement of goods, however, having notified the carriers in advance.
The procedure of mass bans of this kind has never been applied in practice, and manufacturers themselves in their right mind and firm memory will not agree to this, these are exceptional cases. But to expect that the European bureaucracy will not come to direct threats to manufacturers and copyright holders to commit this act of "self-cutting", the author would not - it will come. So far, many representative offices have left, although often they were the suppliers. Someone banned the import of complete equipment, but not components. But these are all unspoken half-measures of the manufacturer himself, who himself is quietly sabotaging the sanctions. With a rigid formulation of the problem, the so-called. "Gray imports" will rise, no matter how some logisticians beat their chests.
Will any channels remain within the same EAEU in this case? Yes, but you can’t call them massive anymore. Goods will be purchased in Kazakhstan or Turkey for Kyrgyzstan, sold there through an analogue of retail or small-scale wholesale trade, then go to us. Long, expensive and not massive. The pressure on manufacturers is already underway, and it will only increase. Here, as an example, we can cite several manufacturers of Chinese drones, which are private corporations that sell their products around the world and cannot but respond to sanctions threats.
Here you can say a lot of the necessary words about how effective the process of import substitution, which will soon be eight years old, can be considered, as well as about the effectiveness of economic policy in general. But here the problem is not only state goal-setting, and having analyzed this, it will be possible to reach the possibility of relatively quick and adequate solutions.
From a certain point of view, it cannot be said that the state has done little for the purposes of parallel imports over the past year. Rather, it should be said that in this area there is no strict division of tasks according to urgency: fast, medium-range and long-term, strategic. And from here comes administration within the chains: supplier, intermediary, broker, distributor, final recipient, regulatory authority.
So, throughout the year of the SVO, we had and still have one of the main tasks - to saturate the units with unmanned vehicles and communications equipment, as well as components for them. The same copters were required, are required and, apparently, will be required in thousands and thousands, and they are purchased by scattered volunteer organizations, for which they are imported in a dozen different ways: through distributors, through retail deliveries from Central Asia, through Ali-express. Now Decree 506 and Order 1532 (“parallel imports”) are in force, the Federal Customs Service provides assistance in a number of procedures, but the problem that these are dual-use products, and therefore are subject to licensing under the FSTEC, has not gone away.
An ordinary volunteer organization will not receive a general license, and 3/4 of the volunteers do not even have the status of a public organization, and one-time private licenses require time and additional payment. And you can carry without a license what flies up to 1 hour and no more than 47 km / h. And this is just a particular example. Not every broker, in turn, will undertake to put himself in intermediaries, and even give guarantees if there are any questions.
It’s hard to say why we do some things separately, but isn’t it easier to unite the volunteers into an Association, under which you can issue an order to import specific FSTEC licenses under the temporary withdrawal of the FSTEC license, and which will be responsible to the regulatory authorities (FTS and FSB) for the distribution and supply routing? And at least these deliveries will have such a sign as a consignment note and a list of commodity nomenclature, brands and codes for these purposes. All this will be all the more relevant, the more seriously our “dear Western partners” will strengthen control over exports and re-exports, as was written in the first part. In this case, just the entire “volunteer wave” will randomly reconfigure to different channels, and even with varying degrees of problematicness.
Large distribution structures, probably, should not just discuss the issues under which code to re-register goods in Turkey and to whom, or under what sauce to issue an invoice in Kazakhstan, but prepare a site where any dual-use products (and the same copters are perceived this way today around the world) will fall out of sight of the customs structures affiliated with the EU, the USA, and at the maximum, the WTO.
This is not such an easy task, since all "free trade" zones were created with an eye to controlling the movement of goods. When everything is good, then it is the removal of duties and barriers, but when everything is not very good, then all these free zones suddenly become somehow not very free for countries cooperating with the West.
You can look at the map and understand that many countries that seem to be well suited for the purpose of parallel imports can actually be put in a difficult position of choice, like the UAE, Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt, and some other countries in Africa. And from the point of view of the WTO, the rules do not apply in Iran and Syria. At the same time, even the formal withdrawal of the Russian Federation from this very WTO will not give much, because here one must not play alone.
And here it is precisely here that the state, for its part, should help in agreements and guarantees to distributors on the creation of such a network of distribution centers, where various necessary components will flow, and then not just be re-exported, but “creatively refined”, separately certified and only then move to us home in the form of a "peaceful tractor". Because copters are one thing, and the industry component base is another.
We cannot do without such intermediate semi-fictitious assembly plants in a number of countries, in conditions when there is a rupture of global ties and we are at the forefront of this process, but at the same time, the same global supranational institutions still operate. And as far as quick solutions are concerned, at the very least it is necessary to do everything possible to cooperate with Iran, where re-export from China or the same Turkey will fall out of the monitoring zone of Western cross-border institutions.
Another thing is that the state cannot and should not count on the fact that somewhere and sometime in the future we will replace imports, but for now, the logisticians themselves will cover all the falling deliveries across the entire nomenclature of the TN VED. This will not work, this is a mutual conciliation process. Here, after the raw material producers, the logisticians with the rest of the nomenclature went to the UAE, and the question whether the UAE itself will withstand all this, in fact, remains open. There was an idea to trade everything in Indian rupees, and India is not very ready.
Therefore, the whole process should be divided together with the nomenclature of imports into these three parts: urgent, medium-term and strategic "long". Each has its own norms, a pool of the state, a pool of suppliers, investments and guarantees. For short and medium distances, Russia may well release representatives of medium-sized businesses, if the rules of the game and the level of its own financial participation are determined in advance.
It's not that the author is trying to hope that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow these mechanisms will work. In fact, many operators understand everything that is described above, but they still expect that the most severe scenarios can be avoided, especially since such a reconfiguration of work and existing schemes, relationships, and connections is also a financial risk. Logistics is an area where creating a new route is like getting married again. But here it is necessary for both the state and the operators to determine whether the next blocking of one of the import directions will, in turn, be an even more costly measure. On talk shows, of course, they will say that Turkey is bad or that someone else has succumbed to US hegemony, etc., but only TV speakers will have to pull out and redirect paid supplies, but the state will have to wait for important components.
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