The ban on foreign market sellers follows an ethnic-related brawl in northern Russia, which left two people dead last year. The law is designed to open the way for Russian agricultural producers and vendors to the markets, which have been controlled mostly by migrants from the Caucasus republics, leading to xenophobic sentiments in society.
"I personally toured two market places in Moscow - Rizhsky and Leningradsky - on April 1 when the law entered force," Konstantin Romodanovsky, director of the Federal Migration Service, said.
Only 10-15 of the 300 retail outlets at the markets he visited were empty, Romodanovsky said in an attempt to reject expectations that the ban on cheap foreign labor would drive up prices.
"If you pull out 10-15 teeth from a shark's mouth, nothing bad will happen," he said while some Russian media reported Monday that more than 30% of markets were empty in Moscow alone.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia, particularly Moscow, saw a strong inflow of migrant workers. Many of them stayed in the country illegally because official registration processes were too complicated and time-consuming.
The state-controlled VTsIOM pollster said Sunday 27% of respondents in Russia had noticed price increases at food and clothes markets, and 21% had complained of a shortage of goods. The authorities put the price rise down to a seasonal trend, and denied any shortages.
Romodanovsky said his department was gradually introducing measures to attract Russians to the markets and let them cooperate directly with producers, which he said would eventually reduce prices.
The official said the Russian economy needed foreign migrant workers, and added that the former foreign traders would have opportunities to re-qualify and move to other sectors.
"They will work where they are really needed," he said.
In order to bridge the labor gap following the ban, the Federal Migration Service is ready to repatriate Russians living in former Soviet republics as part of a federal program, Romodanovsky said.
"As soon as the government approves the program to repatriate Russians to 12 pilot regions, we will start implementing it," he said.
The program expected to come into effect next year is aimed to make up for labor shortages in some regions - primarily the border regions of Primorye and the Khabarovsk Territory in the Far East and some areas in European Russia.
