In the districts of Vitebsk region bordering the Russian Federation, the growth rate of retail trade turnover in shops doubled in September.

On September 28, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA /. Retail sales growth rates in the shops of the Vitebsk Regional Consumer Union, located in the districts bordering the Russian Federation, from September 1 to September 18, 2011, doubled compared to the same period last year, the Vitebsk Regional Control and Accounting Committee informed BELTA correspondent. According to the Vitebsk Regional Consumer Union, in trade facilities located in the border regions of the oblast, retail sales growth rates increased by up to 2 times, and on weekends - from 2 to 2.3 times. High demand is observed for canned meat and dairy products, butter, yogurts, cottage cheese, sausages and smoked products, and alcoholic beverages. Among non-food items, demand is high for underwear knitwear, hosiery, footwear, linen products, household goods, synthetic detergents, household chemicals, stationery, and haberdashery made of genuine and artificial leather. According to the Control and Accounting Committee, one of the reasons for the increased demand for certain food products is their export outside Belarus. The state of the consumer market of the oblast is under the constant control of the Control and Accounting Committee. Control measures and monitoring allow for the identification of shortcomings in public services and the timely adoption of measures to eliminate them. Thus, over 20 days of September, monitoring was carried out in 35 retail outlets located in Vitebsk, Orsha, Glubokoye, as well as in rural settlements of the Glubokoye district. In each retail outlet, cases of absence of goods provided for in the assortment lists were identified, as well as the availability of certain goods in a narrow assortment. For example, in one of the shops in Vitebsk, canned meat was not available for sale for seven days, poultry was not sold for two days, and canned meat for baby food was absent from the shelves for more than two weeks. In a shop in Orsha, poultry had not been sold for a month, and poultry semi-finished products were unavailable for two weeks. Specialists attribute the reasons for this to the failure of suppliers to fulfill orders, untimely replenishment of stocks due to the fault of trade organization employees, as well as increased demand for meat products.

To meet the demand for meat products, the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee has tasked the Vitebsk Concern "Meat and Dairy Products" with supplying meat, semi-finished meat products, sausages, and canned meat, including for children's nutrition, to the region's trade network this month. It is planned to increase the sales of semi-finished meat products and sausages in September of the current year by 24% compared to the corresponding period of 2010, and canned meat by 55%. City and district executive committees have been instructed to allocate meat product volumes to recipients, organise their procurement, and ensure control over the availability of these products in the trade network. Specialists of the Committee of State Control also conducted three unscheduled thematic operational inspections of seven retail outlets. Various violations were identified in each of them. In five retail outlets, goods with expired shelf lives were sold; in five, sanitary norms and rules for the storage and sale of food products were violated; in two, rules for the use of weighing equipment were breached; and in two outlets, the procedure for using cash registers was violated. As a result of the inspections, three offenders have been brought to administrative responsibility with fines totalling Br315 thousand; the issue of bringing seven more offenders to responsibility is under consideration. -0-

BELTA