The head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade was asked to defend hundreds of thousands of market vendors.

“We ask you to consider publishing the Ministry’s official position on resolving the artificially intensified conflict between retail and digital platforms. “This will reduce social tension among hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses,” the letter says. The document, signed by the president of the society, Evgenia Chernitskaya, was sent to the ministry on December 20. FOST states that it is willing to organize a public dialogue between offline retail and digital trade with the participation of the ministry.

The letter states that hundreds of thousands of Russians were able to start their own businesses by becoming partners in markets and providing their families with a stable and permanent income.

“At the same time, partners of the exchanges are paying attention to the increasing frequency of publications in the federal and mainstream media, the tone and content of which directly discredit the exchanges as a business model: supposedly these companies “They cause irreparable damage to traditional retail, discredit retail and will create unequal competition for small and medium-sized businesses,” the letter says.

FOST receives hundreds of requests from sellers and owners of order delivery points, who believe that some of these posts are manipulative in nature with the aim of provoking an artificial conflict between retail and digital platforms and preparing public opinion for tougher measures against the markets.

The society added that for many entrepreneurs, associations with markets are the only source of income. According to FOST experts, currently retail trade, due to its specific characteristics, is far behind in its adaptation to the conditions of the modern digital economy.

“At the same time, calls to recognize markets as commerce and regulate them according to appropriate rules are populist, since they are not based on an understanding of the mechanisms of activity of two, fundamentally different models,” the report states. letter.

As reported by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, on December 19, several associations representing the interests of producers of goods and traditional trade sent letters to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Maxim Oreshkin. Representatives of traditional trading called for amending the bill on the platform economy and forcing exchanges to reveal pricing algorithms. Trade representatives also called for limiting the number of collection points and tackling counterfeit products in the markets.