СОВРЕМЕННЫЕ ПРОБЛЕМЫ РЕГУЛИРОВАНИЯ РОЗНИЧНЫХ ЦЕН НА ПРОДОВОЛЬСТВИЕ

Abstract

The stages of using various methods of regulating retail prices for food products in Russia are traced: from the enactment of regulations on price liberalization and the establishment of State regulated prices for a number of consumer goods, including some foodstuffs in the 1990s, to adjustments to existing legislation on the organization of trade activities in the face of soaring prices for socially important foodstuffs at the end of 2020. Negative price changes in the food sector during this period coincided with the negative dynamics of population incomes, the compression of solvent demand, which was the result of a new global challenge - the COVID-19 pandemic. The reasons for the adoption in 2009 of the Law on the basics of state regulation of trade activities in the Russian Federation, consisting in the need to protect the interests of end consumers, small agribusiness, producers and suppliers of agrifood products in the conditions of rapid growth of retail chains and the formation of their dominant position in the food market segment, are shown. The proposals contained in the economic literature aimed at changing the share of retail chains in the food market were systematized and analyzed. The importance of developing institutional regulation of this process in the direction of accounting for the total share of all retail chains in the circulation of food products within the boundaries of the administrativeterritorial formation was noted. The feasibility of expanding the list of socially significant essential food products for which maximum permissible retail prices can be set is justified. Based on the experience of price regulation in developed market economies, it has been noted that it is advisable to actively use this method of managing aggregate demand in a crisis economy. At the same time, the priority of indirect regulation of food prices by expanding the competitive environment by improving the development and implementation of antitrust laws is emphasized.