Well, 3 years passed by and at last the government seems to have heard the voices of Russian wine importers. During the 26 of May meeting with the top entrepreneurs Dmitry Medvedev suddenly replied to Maxim Kashirin’s proper questions regarding the necessity of the ineffective EGAIS system. Medvedev actually said that he’d never believed in the system and it needed to be revised carefully. The President gave appropriate instructions to his ministers Kudrin and Shuvalov to work out some suggesting on the system restructure. By the way, Simple Wine Co owner Maxim Kashirin also pointed out that the expenses to service the system continue to rise for his company – twofold – and now it’s 114 000 rubles a month (US$3650). This is a minimum package for a single company, it includes 4 workplaces to maintain the system.

Still there’s clear evidence that the EGAIS software developers do take advantage of their monopolist position on the market and state higher prices for different companies. Rosstat says there’s more than 170 importers of alcoholic beverages in Russia meaning they can earn more than 665 million rubles (about 21.4 million U.S. dollars). And they surely can make a market of the software updates. Not necessarily a fair market.