The Kyrgyzstani flour mills oppose the return of VAT to foreign grain. This was stated by Vice-President of the Union of entrepreneurs of Kyrgyzstan Zamir of Saikov, speaking at a press conference.

"In 2015, the government has exempted from VAT payment upon import of grain domestic flour producers. This has helped to resume the work of over 30 companies. Now the deputies again want to repeat the events of two years ago. If the VAT is re-injected, all flour mills will close. More than 20 thousand people remain without a livelihood," — he stressed.

Also Zamir of Chuikov noted that after the accession of Kyrgyzstan to the EEU market was saturated with Russian and Kazakh flour. Because of this 56 local importing companies had closed and were forced to suspend work for another Kyrgyzstani 20 flour mills. Others work only 30% – 40% of full capacity.

Earlier, the Kyrgyz millers have repeatedly complained that the opening of the customs borders with the accession to Eurasian economic Union has led to the growth of cheaper imports of Kazakh flour and downtime of mills of Kyrgyzstan.

Also the Kyrgyzstani entrepreneurs in the production of flour is often mixed with imported grain with local, which has a very low level of gluten. For this reason, local flour has a lesser demand in comparison with Kazakh and Russian.

Photo: olx.kz