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I was never particularly worried about the harm of alcohol, until the problem of excessive drinking of strong drinks touched my older brother. At the same time, it touched so that the consequences of alcohol addiction became catastrophic.
In short, my brother always stood out from the rest. Active, physically developed, and finished school with a gold medal. Why not a role model and an object of envy for peers?
Of course, such successes allowed him to enter a decent university as an economist without any problems, and after that, get a good job in a bank.
Agree, the picture is almost perfect, if not for one overshadowing factor – the love of alcohol. And you know, at first it wasn’t a big problem. Yes, I drank after work or on the day off, but who doesn’t?
So I thought that there would be no problems with this – an adult, strong-willed, knows how to control himself and knows when to stop. But water wears away the stone and gradually the passion for strong drinks began to develop into addiction.
Lateness to work began, and on the day off it was almost impossible to find him completely sober. The first sign of the impending disaster was the loss of a job. Perhaps it was here that there was a point of no return, when my brother lowered his hands and drank for real.
Gradually, friends began to turn away from him, and instead of looking for a new job, he sank deeper and deeper to the bottom of the bottle. When this concerns you personally, you begin to wonder why the state does not take effective measures to combat alcohol addiction.
Or maybe the opposite is true and it is unprofitable for officials to deal with excessive alcohol consumption? Statistics and analytics will help us understand this issue.
What are the volumes of trade and consumption of alcohol in Russia
I’m sure you’ve heard the statement that Russians drink a lot. So, according to the WHO (World Health Organization), Russia is only 26th in the list of the most drinking countries in the world.
The question is, what are we drinking? I will cite the data for 2019 so that you, the reader, have a complete picture of the import and consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Alcohol production for 2019 (according to the Analytical Center for the Government of the Russian Federation).
In total, Russia produces about 900 million decalitres of alcohol. If we translate into liters, then we multiply this figure by 10.
If you look at the statistics of the Analytical Center under the Government of the Russian Federation, then beer is the leader in terms of production volume – it accounts for about 85% of the total share of production.
The remaining places in the intoxicating train are occupied by vodka and wines (table, sweet, sparkling, etc.), which account for the remaining 15%.
Import figures
If you thought that we provide ourselves with a native Russian drink, I will disappoint you, even vodka is quite imported from abroad. Belarus is the largest supplier of vodka, accounting for more than half of the total volume.
But, what is most amusing, among the countries of suppliers, not only Finland, familiar to us, but also France and Sweden were noted.
Referring to the annual report (2019) of the Analytical Center under the Government of the Russian Federation, in total, more than 82 thousand decalitres of alcohol are brought to us. And this is only official statistics, that is, products that have been certified are evaluated.
How much money does the state earn from the production of alcohol
On alcohol, the state earns three times:
- in production;
- on sale;
- on taxes.
The total “alcohol budget” of the country is estimated at 1 trillion rubles and is about 5% of all financial revenues to the budget (according to the data of the Russian Ministry of Finance).
In addition to sales within the country, part of the production is exported. The largest consumers of our alcohol are Armenia, Great Britain, Germany, Kazakhstan and Ukraine (according to the Federal Customs Service of Russia).
How much money does the state earn from excise taxes
Fortunately, the answer to the question of state revenues from excises on alcohol is very simple: just contact the Russian Treasury for statistics.
Data from the Analytical Center for the Government of the Russian Federation.
Here attention is drawn to the income from excises on vodka. With many times less production than beer, it is this category of goods that is taxed the most.
It becomes interesting how much in the cost of a bottle bought in a store is the price for vodka and how many excises and other government fees are there?
Where does this money go, how is it redistributed?
And now the most interesting begins – where does the money received by the state go? All revenues from excises on alcohol go to the federal budget, after which 40% of the collected is distributed among the regions, depending on the share in production.
In other words, the more alcoholic products were produced in the region, the greater the amount will return to the local budget.
In this matter, beer costs separately, 100% of excises for its sale immediately go to the regional budget. Now we understand why it is beer that occupies a dominant position in the structure of production – this is simply beneficial for the regions.
We calculate the damage – if the Russians start drinking half as much
Is there such damage at all? The question here is not so much short-term profit, but investing in social capital. Suppose our population abruptly refuses alcohol and reduces its consumption by half. Whether there will be an economic crisis then is a question of dry numbers.
Demonstrative statistics.
According to the Unified Portal of the Russian Budget System, federal budget revenues for 2020 amount to just over 21 trillion rubles, while expenditures are only 18.2 trillion. It turns out that we have 2.8 trillion. rub. surplus, i.e., the money that will go to the reserve fund.
Roughly speaking, cutting alcohol consumption in half will lead to a proportional decrease in excise revenues (ie, 50%).
Now we take the calculator and the statistics we have collected, and we understand that the loss on excises will be about 177 billion rubles. or about 6% of that fund, which doesn’t seem like a significant figure.
Of course, there are still losses of the enterprises themselves, possible job cuts and the resulting lost taxes, but such factors are offset by the introduction of government regulation, tax incentives and higher alcohol prices.
The alcohol business is a whole chain of producers, distributors and consumers, which makes some richer and others more obedient. It takes time, money and, most importantly, the desire of the state to work for the benefit of people to unravel this chain.
Unfortunately, I do not have a recipe for how to break this vicious circle. And what do you think, will we be able to overcome the “Green Serpent” or will we remain in his intoxicated slavery?