Russian Lawmakers Ask Government to Cut 35% Duty on Vitamins and Supplements Without Domestic Equivalents

Communist Party lawmakers in Russia's State Duma have asked the government to lower import duties on dietary supplements and vitamins that have no exact equivalents made inside the country, warning that a prohibitive 35% tariff approved at the end of September on such goods from countries Moscow lists as unfriendly could lead to shortages. The appeal was reported by Svobodnaya Pressa.

Deputies Alexey Kurinny and Georgy Kamnev, together with Communist senator Airat Gibatdinov, addressed the request to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. They ask him to consider reducing the import customs duty on biologically active supplements and vitamins “that have no analogues and are not produced on the territory of the Russian Federation.”

The scope of the request

The wording matters for importers. The lawmakers are not asking for the 35% rate to be withdrawn across the whole category; they are asking for relief limited to positions with no Russian-made counterpart. That keeps the request compatible with the government's stated import-substitution goals while carving out products where substitution is not currently possible.

The tariff was approved at the end of September and applies to supplements and vitamins produced in unfriendly countries, according to Svobodnaya Pressa. Neither the outlet nor the lawmakers published a list of affected product positions or the import volumes involved.

Supply risk at 35%

“There is a risk of shortages on some items, because a 35% duty makes supplies economically unprofitable for many suppliers,” Kurinny said in an interview with Gazeta.Ru. The warning is about withdrawal as much as price: above a certain landed cost, a distributor stops ordering rather than raising shelf prices.

Kurinny also argued that the category should be treated differently from state procurement. Vitamins, medicines, medical devices and children's goods “should be outside politics and excessive protectionism,” he told Gazeta.Ru, especially when citizens' own money is involved rather than state purchases. He said vitamins and supplements are used on a mass scale by middle- and low-income consumers, including pensioners, and that the debate over their clinical efficacy does not change the scale of demand or the fact that not all positions can be replaced by domestic analogues.

Why the lawmakers prefer localisation

Import substitution in vitamins and supplements would be better achieved by creating favourable conditions for localising production inside Russia, Kurinny said. He warned that an absence of competition during a redivision of the market will lead to higher prices for domestic products, hitting consumers who use supplements for basic support, prevention and management of chronic illness.

• On affected lines importers face three options: absorb the duty in margin, pass it to retail prices, or stop shipping the item.
• Products with no Russian equivalent offer pharmacy chains and online retailers no substitution route, so gaps appear directly on the shelf.
• Suppliers based outside the unfriendly-country list are not subject to the same rate, which gives them a cost advantage on comparable formulations.

What happens next

The appeal is a request to the prime minister rather than draft legislation, and no government response had been reported at the time of publication. Any relief would require a change to the decision that set the 35% rate.

Until that happens the 35% duty stands, and decisions on affected catalogues sit with importers and their suppliers rather than with regulators. For distributors, the immediate work is recalculating landed cost line by line and deciding which products remain worth shipping.