Russian Cheese, Anyone? Imports Hard to Replace in Moscow
Nikolai Borisov, the proprietor of three Italian restaurants in Moscow, has been forced to take Gorgonzola cheese and Parma ham off his menus after PresidentVladimir Putin banned some food imports in August.
“You can make pizza using Russian cheese, but it won’t taste anything like Italian food,” said Borisov, 34. “When you thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. The government passes one law worse than the other.”
Responding to European Union and U.S. sanctions by prohibiting purchases of certain types of meat, vegetables and dairy has been a small boon to parts of the Russian economy — cheese output, for instance, jumped 17 percent in September and meat production climbed 12 percent, according to government data.
Imported cheese made up 30 percent of the Russian market before the ban, Agriculture Minister Nikolai Fedorov said Oct. 9. About 15 percent of fish and seafood imports are blocked by sanctions, he said.
Yet the effects are rippling through the economy in terms of higher prices. The cost of meat and poultry jumped 16.8 percent in the 12 months through September, the most since July 2009, while dairy-product prices climbed 16.2 percent, according to Russia’s Federal Service of State Statistics.
Those increases have contributed to a surge in Russia’s overall inflation rate to 8 percent last month, the highest in three years.
Borisov, who runs Kvartira 44, Mart and Mercato restaurants in Moscow, said he “panicked” when he first heard about the food ban and quickly bought non-perishable food like Parma ham, Italian flour, sun-dried tomatoes and olives. The increased demand pushed up prices and supplies grew scarce, he said.
Source: bloomberg-Russian Cheese, Anyone? Imports Hard to Replace in Moscow
