Kremlin supports ban on purchase of imported products to state companies

The idea to ban the purchase of imported products to state companies if the national analogues are available on the market has been supported by the Russian presidential administration, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Forbes.ru.
According to Peskov, no final decision on this issue has been made yet: the discussion on which imports should be banned is underway. “The reasonableness principle should be observed. In some cases substitution is impossible,” the presidential press secretary said Monday.
The Kommersant daily wrote earlier on Monday that the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade has prepared the “general directive” to the state companies concerning the ban on the purchases of imported metallurgy, heavy machine building and automobile industry products. According to the newspaper, the ban should apply to the imported products except those that have no analogues in Russia.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade said the measure will be applied to the organizations with state share of over 50%, but not state unitary enterprises, as they have no boards of directors. The document does not specify the state companies, but gives a link to the list of the joint stock companies the members of the boards of directors of which vote under the government directive, the daily writes.
According to the market players, the ban may affect most of all special construction equipment and aircraft supplies, while metallurgy and automobile industry will not suffer much. The newspaper says that the document should come into force before the end of the year: the directive will be considered first by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and then it will be sent to the Federal Agency for State Property Management (Rosimushchestvo).