vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #153 / Business / Reading article...

Primorye markets will have to sign contracts with Chinese trading companies, rather than letting individual merchants sell their goods, under a new decree from the krai administration.

The decree will allow authorities to regulate trade and gather more taxes into the budget, said Sergei Pushkaryov, the local head of the Federal Migration Service.

“We did not invent anything new,” he said. “We just follow the decree of Russia’s president on using foreign labor on Russia’s territory.”

Since December 1993, when it was signed, every company that invites foreigners to work has had to get permission from the Federal Migration Service. The permission is given for a year.

The Russian side suggested the decree, but the government of Heilungkiang province in the north of China agreed order to promote trade with Chinese companies rather than individuals.

Pushkaryov says that the new decree will protect the Chinese merchants and allow to control the quality of the goods. But it has also resulted in a new crackdown on individual merchants in the marketplaces.

“You can get lost in the ‘Chinatown’ in Ussurisk Market,” Pushkaryov said. “Look at those wholesale warehouses. They live there for ages. They give birth, they get sick, they probably die there.”

Tsing Khun Zhi, head of a Chinese trading company at the Nekrasovsky market in Vladivostok, said he didn’t mind the law. “It is better to trade legally,” he said. “You don’t have to hide.”

Before, a Chinese merchant with a “bad passport” had to bribe the police so they would let him trade, he said. Now there are fewer cases like that. However, he complained that it took a month and a half to get proper documents.

The market’s accountant, Svetlana Kisloglyad, was satisfied with the decree: “It is more convenient to work with one registered company, and the profit is no less than before.”

Pushkaryov thinks that the tourist firms that bring Chinese illegal traders in tourist groups here might lose their profits. The general director of one such firm, who asked not to be named, said: “As a citizen of Russia I would like them to pay taxes, and I wouldn’t mind if they trade in a civilized way. But as a director of a firm, I worry that we will have fewer clients. But my firm has other activities, so we won’t go bankrupt.”

Asked whether his firm takes a cut of the money from unregistered Chinese merchants, he said, “We may or we may not. It is not a proper question to ask.”

Under the decree, there can be 1,000-1,500 foreign traders in Primorye. There is a quota of 15,000 foreign workers for Primorye, but the bulk are Chinese and Korean construction workers. The Migration Service already has contracts with Chinese companies to bring 200 traders to Nakhodka, 300 to Ussurisk and 200 to Vladivostok.