MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th December, 2020) The Russian government has approved the ban on public procurement of medical face masks produced outside the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), until December 31, 2021, thus expanding the list of foreign goods prohibited for public procurement in Russia.
In late April, the government issued a list of foreign goods prohibited for public procurement. The list included chemical, household and office supplies, as well as furniture, weapons, construction materials, and musical instruments. This restriction did not apply to the goods produced by the EAEU countries, including Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
"Rule that the prohibitions provisioned by paragraph one and two of this decree, regarding medical masks, specified in articles 123 and 126 of the list, stay in force until December 31, 2021," the government's decree said.
The document also added new groups of goods to the list, namely medical goods, including surgical and head and face protective equipment.
On November 2, the Russian Industry and Trade Ministry came up with a draft project to prohibit the public procurement of medicine masks. The ministry justified its initiative by saying that Russia had increased its daily amount of masks' production to 21 million pieces, while the maximum daily national demand was no more than 11 million masks. According to the ministry, the state procurement of foreign masks would negatively affect national producers that faced lack of demand in Russia's market.
