MOSCOW, January 29. /TASS/. The share of illegal trade in clothing and textiles in Russia fell from 38% to 12% in 2025, while the figure for footwear declined from 22% to 6%, Russian Minister of Industry and Trade Anton Alikhanov said at parliamentary hearings in the State Duma.

"We see how sharply the shadow market has contracted. According to calculations by the Higher School of Economics, the share of illegal turnover in clothing and textiles has decreased from 38% to 12%, and in footwear from 22% to 6%," he said.

The minister noted that more than 90% of the light industry’s product range is now subject to mandatory labeling. "It is proposed to add handbags and suitcases made of genuine leather to the list of goods subject to mandatory labeling and to close loopholes that still remain in the footwear segment. First of all, it is necessary to label not only the finished products, which is already being done, but also semi-finished components. They are often imported, even though the footwear is presented as purely Russian-made," Alikhanov said.

The second area the Ministry of Industry and Trade is working on is the automatic blocking of the issuance of labeling codes to fictitious manufacturers, Alikhanov continued.

A permanent mechanism will be created to automatically block labeling codes for such producers. In a pilot phase, it found that 95.5% of the companies checked did not have real production capacities.