Marketplaces propose to replace infrastructure payment with services for Russian Post - paper

MOSCOW. Aug 22 (Interfax) - Marketplaces have offered Russian Post an alternative to a proposed infrastructure payment equivalent to 0.5% of sales that would see them providing the state company with orders for provision of services, business daily Vedomosti reported on Tuesday, citing sources.

This could involve giving the company a portion of intercity deliveries or rights to use warehouses. The marketplaces propose to provide an amount of mandatory services that would be comparable to the infrastructure payment.

Talks are still continuing and no specific decision has been made yet. Participants in the talks hope to reach a consensus in September, the paper's sources said.

State Duma member Alexander Khinshtein also confirmed that Russian Post and marketplaces are supposed to present the results of their work on this issue in early September, the paper said.

Russian Post tabled a proposal in the spring to charge marketplaces and other e-commerce companies with annual revenue upwards of 1 billion rubles an infrastructure payment in the amount of 0.5% of quarterly turnover. Russian Post proposed to use this money to maintain its network of unprofitable post offices and to have itself designated as the federal supplier of last resort for e-commerce goods.

Russian Post head Mikhail Volkov said earlier that the infrastructure payments would generate about 24 billion-25 billion rubles of revenue annually.