The functioning of the Customs Union must fully meet the interests of Belarus - A. Lukashenko

March 11, Minsk / BELTA /. The functioning of the Customs Union must fully meet the interests of Belarus. This was stated today by the head of state Alexander Lukashenko, who was briefed on the first months of the single customs tariff and the results of the Customs Union Commission (CUC) meeting on February 26, BELTA was informed by the press service of the Belarusian leader. The report to the President was presented by the CUC co-chairman from the Belarusian side, Deputy Prime Minister of the republic Andrei Kobyakov. The Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Leonid Anfimov also took part in the working meeting. "I am interested, in fact, in one main question: to what extent does this union and the proposals and elaborations made during your negotiations in Moscow correspond to the interests of Belarus, our people?" - said Alexander Lukashenko. The President inquired about the mechanism for distributing import customs duties among the budgets of the three countries. "Naturally, these are immeasurable coefficients (Russia imports goods tens of times more than we and Kazakhstan), but nevertheless, policy must be built in such a way that we do not lose anything. What is the accounting methodology here? Have you reached a consensus?" - asked the head of state. Alexander Lukashenko emphasized: "We are building a customs union. But we must understand that it will be doomed to failure if, at this stage, we start making some amendments, exceptions, contradicting these processes, inventing some special model... If we create a customs union, we must be guided by its classical concept, classical principles, which are universally known. It is for such a union that we agreed initially," the President stated. He recalled that Belarus views the customs union as a stage on the way to a single economic space. "If they start making reservations and withdrawing oil, petroleum products, gas, sugar, milk, butter, meat, wheat, and so on - such a customs union is probably not needed by Russia, nor Kazakhstan, nor Belarus. Therefore, I would like to clearly see our interests and our positions," said the Belarusian leader. "I am simply warning you as the head of the Belarusian delegation to the CUC: we must in no case deceive our partners, nor compromise our interests. We must decide right now - because later, when this process becomes irreversible, it will be too late to fight for our own interests." The President added that everything must be done honestly and decently. "We are not rich enough to sacrifice any interests. We are not Kazakhstan, let alone Russia - they have something to sacrifice, they have enough reserves of hydrocarbon raw materials," he noted. Informing the head of state, Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Kobyakov recalled that the single customs tariff came into force on January 1, 2010. In general, this process went smoothly, as Belarus already had a sufficient degree of tariff unification with the CU partner countries before its introduction. The work is organized here, and there are no major problems, Andrei Kobyakov noted. Previously, economic entities had questions about how their investment projects related to the application of customs benefits would be implemented. By CUC Decision No. 130 of November 27, 2009, the application of customs benefits in accordance with national legislation is established for investment projects of national economic importance on the territory of the three states. The necessary condition for this is notification of the CUC, which will maintain a corresponding register. The procedure for duty-free import of goods into the charter capital of enterprises formed with foreign investment was also agreed upon. From July 1, 2010, a single customs territory should be operational. But for this to be implemented, a number of agreements need to be prepared. One of the key ones is the agreement on the distribution of import customs duties. As the Deputy Prime Minister reported, the discussion between the experts of the CU parties on this issue was quite active. The parties have resolved issues related to the accumulation of customs payments, and the timely transfer of customs payments between the budgets of the parties. The parameters for the distribution of import customs duties between the budgets have been practically agreed upon. During the working meeting, the head of state paid special attention to the issue of import customs duties on passenger cars for individuals. Andrei Kobyakov reported that negotiations on an agreement on regulating the import of goods by individuals into the CU territory are planned to begin in the near future. They should be completed by July 1. If this does not happen, national legislation will apply, and there will be no legal vacuum, the Deputy Prime Minister emphasized. The same applies to free economic zones. The Belarusian side proceeds from the fact that the seven-year period guaranteed by the Presidential decree on unchanged conditions for investors in FEZs will be observed for at least this period. The Deputy Prime Minister also reported on the work to prepare the Customs Union Code for ratification by the three parliaments. During this work, deputies, the business community, and interested citizens made about 150 proposals to the Code signed on November 27. All of them have been considered in detail. Of the 25 proposals received from the Belarusian side, 24 were taken into account. The greatest discussion during the preparation of the final version of the Customs Code was caused by the wording of the article on how the single customs territory would be formed. The position of Belarus and Kazakhstan was that it should be a cohesive territory encompassing the space of the three states. Russian partners, on the other hand, initially insisted that the single customs territory should be a combination of three customs territories. The final version of the article was decided to be approved in the variant supported by Belarus. The Government of Belarus believes that issues related to export customs duties should be resolved in the near future, as with such a formation of a single customs territory, their application in mutual trade is impossible. Issues related to the process of joining the WTO should also be resolved. During the report, other topics were also considered, in particular, preparations for the Union Council of Ministers to be held in Brest on March 16, problems of bilateral cooperation between Belarus and Russia, and the development of Belarus's export potential. The President gave specific instructions to the government on all these topics.