Compliance with the requirements of the draft laws on the regulation of trade in tobacco and nicotine-containing products, including licensing, will lead to additional costs for large retail chains by tens of billions of rubles. This was stated to RBC by the Association of Retail Companies (ACORT), which includes the largest retailers occupying more than 40% of the Russian retail market (including X5 Group, Magnit, Lenta, Metro Cash & Carry, Auchan and others).
The main provisions of the upcoming changes in the regulation of tobacco trade with the introduction of licenses for this activity were revealed by Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Sazanov at a meeting of the State Council commission on Wednesday. Starting from September 1, 2026, trade in tobacco and nicotine-containing products without licenses will be prohibited, and administrative and criminal liability will be threatened for violations. The licenses themselves will begin to be issued on March 1 next year, and a transition period will be set until September 1, 2027 to bring the outlets in line with the new requirements.
Licensing will apply to wholesale, retail and shipping trade, and permits will be issued on the principle of "one outlet, one license." It will be possible to obtain a permit for the retail sale of tobacco through the licensing authorities of the subjects, and Rosalokoltabakcontrol will issue and revoke licenses for wholesale sales. To obtain a license, you will need to pay a fee: for one retail license, it will amount to 20 thousand rubles per year for each point, for wholesalers — 800 thousand rubles for five years.
In addition to the duty, there are other requirements: in particular, for the sale of tobacco and nicotine-containing products, a store or pavilion with an area of at least 5 square meters is needed. m is owned or leased for a period of at least a year. At the same time, the regions will have the right to introduce stricter requirements: to set additional restrictions on places of sale and to raise the minimum area of a tobacco outlet (but not more than twice).
The bill seriously changes the rules of the game for business, and now all industry associations are working to make it as balanced as possible and avoid risks to the legal market, says Stanislav Bogdanov, Chairman of the ACORT Presidium. He notes that in dialogue with the developers, the principle of "one object, one license" has been achieved: "This approach will avoid a situation where the closure of one store endangers the operation of the entire network."
But the new licensing procedure will lead to an increase in trade costs, Bogdanov warns: for large chains with hundreds and thousands of retail facilities, the fee will cost a significant amount.
In addition, a violation in one store will lead to the fact that the retail chain will not be able to obtain new licenses for a year: this will stop investments in opening thousands of stores and creating new jobs, says the chairman of the AKORT Presidium.
The regulation proposed by the Ministry of Finance contains another initiative that is "unreasonably expensive," according to Bogdanov. We are talking about the mandatory traceability of the storage of tobacco products when moving within the same legal entity according to the reason for registration. "To implement it, ACORT member retail chains alone will need tens of billions of rubles of additional expenses per year for hiring new employees and purchasing equipment," Bogdanov warns. The expediency of these costs, according to him, is "questionable," since counterfeit products do not enter legal retail: retail chains account for only "one hundred thousandth of a percent" of the total volume of tobacco product blockages.
The requirement to limit tobacco sales within 100 m of educational institutions may also be difficult for businesses to implement. Its application is possible only after the government approves the federal methodology for determining the boundaries and territories of educational services, a complete list of such institutions and a clear methodology for calculating the 100-meter zone, explains the Chairman of the ACORT Presidium. "Now this issue has not been resolved, and this creates a large field for free interpretation: many retail facilities across the country simply will not be able to work," Bogdanov added.
The regulation proposed by the Ministry of Finance generally looks "fairly balanced," but it is fraught with risks for small sellers of tobacco and nicotine-containing products, says Mikhail Burmistrov, CEO of INFOLine Analytics. For example, some regions may impose stricter requirements on the size of retail outlets. The basic requirement for the minimum area of a retail outlet (5 sq. m. m) there are no questions, according to Burmistrov. However, if the regional authorities decide to double this threshold to 10 square meters, as stipulated by the new regulations, this will create a problem for some market participants. In addition, the cost of an annual license itself can be a significant cost for some small retail outlets, the expert adds. The CEO of Infoline Analytics estimates the number of facilities at risk of closure at 5-7% of the total number of legal outlets selling tobacco products.
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