DUSHANBE, July 17, 2010, Asia-Plus — Eight CIS nations plan to annul import duties.
The countries making up the Customs Union, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, as well as Tajikistan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Ukraine plan to conclude a common treaty on free trade implying the annulment of import duties.
Maxim Medvedkov, director of trade negotiations department within Russia’s Ministry for Economic Development, remarked this at a meeting with reporters in Moscow on July 16, following a meeting of the working group for development of a treaty on the free trade (FTZ) within the CIS area, according to Russia’s RIA Novosti.
According to him, these countries mainly annulled these duties under bilateral agreements in the mid-1990s and the new treaty on free trade will strengthen and develop relevant commitments and will replace the old bilateral agreements.
As far as export duties are concerned, we want to fix them at the present rate, Medvedkov said.
According to him, the July 16 meeting of the working group “came close to a draft treaty, on which we still have a few differences.”
Medvedkov stressed that under the draft treaty, trade restrictions might be introduced only on the basis of stringent criteria. “The document provides for freedom of commodity transit, and the supranational arbitration for settlement of trade disputes will be established in common with that of the World Trade Organization (WTO),” the Russian official noted.
Turkmenistan has not yet been involved in the talks on concluding a free trade treaty, Medvedkov said. “Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan are participating as observers,” said he, “These two countries pan to make decision on joining the treaty in the near future.”
According to Russia’s Ministry for Economic Development, the next meeting of the working group is expected to take place on September 8-9 this year in order to prepare the resulting documents before the meeting of the CIS council of ministers of economy that will be held in Moscow on September 10, 2010.
In the meantime, Medvedkov noted that Russia could not lift its export duties on oil, oil products and natural gas. “The negotiating logic is that not to raise the applicable export duties,” he said.
We will recall that Prime Minister Oqil Oqilov last month sent an official letter to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, asking to consider the possibility of lifting export duties on light oil for Tajikistan.
On May 1, 2010, Russia introduced the export duty on light oil for Tajikistan at the rate of 203.7 U.S. dollars per one ton and on June 1, the export duty was raised to 209.1 U.S. dollars. Introduction of the export duty on light oil has resulted in gasoline prices rising some 20 percent in Tajikistan in late May. The price of one liter of 95-octane gasoline in Dushanbe has risen from 3.90 somoni to 4.40, with similar price rises in other parts of the country.
According to Russian media, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan had been receiving Russian fuel duty free since 1995, in keeping with protocols to the government-to-government agreements on the establishment of a free trade zone within the CIS area. However, Russian customs started collecting a duty on oil products exported to Kyrgyzstan on April 1 and to Tajikistan on May 1.
