The head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade explained the need to increase recycling

In Russia, there are "gray" schemes for importing cars, through which, under the guise of importing to individuals with the payment of preferential recycling, foreign cars are brought in for resale, including dealers. As a result, the disparity between the import by an official dealer, a legal entity, and individuals becomes significant. This was stated at a meeting in the State Duma by the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation Anton Alikhanov.

"This is either 5,000 rubles or 1 million or more for a new imported car. Unfortunately, we have a situation where, following the results of 9 months of this year, more than 73% of imported cars were imported by individuals. Our dealerships are starting to provide services for so-called gray sales, when cars imported to individuals are already sold through dealerships. This leads to a significant distortion of the market," RBC quoted Alikhanov as saying on October 8.

The head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade noted that since the saturation of the car market is mainly due to imports, the companies that have launched factories in Russia (including Chinese ones) will stop their investments. Previous indexation of scrap collection since 2024 has not affected car prices in the Russian Federation, and some dealers have even seen a decrease in the cost of a number of models, Alikhanov said. Due to the growth of recycling, some importers have gone into the shadows, and federal budget revenues from recycling have decreased instead of the expected growth.

"We had to sequester more than 110 billion rubles through the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Now we have come up with a proposal to sequester another 124 billion rubles," the minister said and stressed that these funds are being used to support the automotive industry, aircraft construction and other industries.

Alikhanov also recalled that there are no plans to increase recycling for cars with a capacity of over 160 hp, which is more than 80% of cars in the country. Cars like BMW or Volkswagen do not belong to the economy segment, he pointed out. The decision to change the recycling system is overdue, but, as the minister added, he understands "that it hardly causes joy."

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The draft government decree developed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade assumes the introduction of a new criterion for calculating the size of the scrap yard from November 1 of this year — engine power. The existing grace periods for individual importers who import cars for personal use (3.4 thousand rubles for new models and 5.2 thousand rubles for cars older than three years) will remain. However, they will only apply to models no more powerful than 160 hp.

Domestic automakers such as AGR Holding and Avtotor supported the planned changes in recycling. Sergey Tselikov, CEO of Autostat, said that if the rules for calculating recycling are changed, cars of premium brands such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi will rise in price quite seriously in Russia.

On September 30, it was reported that the leader of the Fair Russia — For Truth faction, Sergei Mironov, sent a letter to the head of the Cabinet of Ministers, Mikhail Mishustin, with a proposal to abandon the increase in the recycling fee for cars, as well as to provide benefits for its payment to large families and members of their families.

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