Every year, the Ukrainian budget loses UAH 50 billion from shadow food retail, said Ruslan Dubas, vice-chairman of the EBA retail trade committee and director of the legal department of Auchan Ukraine, during the forum “Detinization and Fair Competition” on Monday.
“The direct consequence of the shadow economy is losses for the budget. According to estimates, the budget loses at least UAH 50 billion every year in food retail alone. In particular, the shadow alcohol business gives about UAH 10 billion in underpaid taxes. There are no such detailed statistics for food products, but, for example, only the Dairy Union says that from a third to a half of dairy products are either counterfeit, falsified, or in the shadows,” he said.
According to his estimates, such systemic problems also exist in the meat, bakery and other industries.
As for illegal or “gray” imports of food products, the underpayment of duties, according to experts, is 15-20 billion UAH.
“In our conditions, this is a large amount. If you remember, the last tax increase was justified by the fact that an additional 150 billion UAH needed to be raised in the budget to cover the necessary needs for the war and other expenses. That is, the food industry alone, if brought out of the shadows, can cover a third of these needs,” Dubas believes.
