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No Changes for Meat, Sugar Import
The working group of the government’s commission on foreign trade protection met Tuesday to focus on poultry and sugar imports. The bureaucrats resolved not to trim the import duties on above-quota deliveries of poultry and pork in 2007 and recommended to Economic Development Ministry to raise embargo on re-executing licenses from the E.U. to other countries, as the import from some European states (Hungary, Holland) was banned because of the bird flu.
So far, the Economic Development Ministry has been refusing to re-execute licenses for quoted meat/poultry import from one country to another in an effort not to breach the agreements sealed by Russia with the United States and the E.U. during negotiations on the WTO membership. Today’s decision is to resume re-execution within a fortnight.
On the same day, the working group shelved the issue of changing the current import duties on raw sugar advocated by the Union of Sugar Producers. The WTO agreements that Russia made with some countries (for instance with Brazil, which is the key supplier of raw sugar) don’t allow it to independently amend the import procedures. But keeping the rates at $140 a ton, the experts say, preserves domestic market’s dependence on the world prices for sugar and further fuels the prices, which climbed 40 percent from early this year.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 23, 2006
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