Eight Countries in CIS Reached a Preliminary Agreement on Tariff Cancellation

According to a report from a website of Central Asia news, on July 16, 2010, Maxim Medvedkov, head of the department of trade negotiation under the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, told to the media after the workgroup conference of "free trade area agreement of CIS countries", apart from Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, eight countries of the Commonwealth of the Independent States (CIS) (that is Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) have reached a consensus on canceling the import tariff on almost all the commodities in the trade among the eight countries.

With respect to export tariff, Russia hopes to keep the existing tariff rates since it can not cancel the export tariff on petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas.

As per Maxim Medvedkov's remarks, the free trade area agreement has formulated regulations on many aspects, including the determination rules for origin of commodities, restrictions on the use in the third-country trade, free transit, re-export, special safeguard measures, anti-dumping and compensation regulations, issues on competition and subsidies, technical barriers to trade, sanitation inspection and plant quarantine, customs control, and settlement of disputes. After the agreement is formally signed, it may substitute for hundreds of relevant existing documents on the adjustment of the trade relations among the CIS countries.