Translated material
Thanks for the alcohol, but not for the cars
Lithuanian car dealers benefited from the emergence of the Customs Union
Belarusians do not expect significant changes in trade with Russia after the code of the trilateral Customs Union , in which Minsk, Moscow and Astana participate, comes into force. The Code came into force a week ago, but Belarusian enterprises that previously supplied products to Russia have not yet noticed any serious changes in trade with it. There is a simple explanation for this: Minsk and Moscow created a bilateral Customs Union back in the mid-1990s, within which simplified procedures were used for the movement of goods between countries.But in the Kazakh direction, a lot has changed for the better, and Belarusian industrialists started talking about new prospects for cooperation with this country. “Now we don’t have to waste time and money on going through customs procedures, and besides, a zero value added tax (VAT) rate has come into effect. The working conditions with Kazakhstan have become the same as they were with Russia, and we are still working with it as before,” Elena Babkina, deputy general director of the Belarusian dairy enterprise Savushkin Product, told Vremya Novostei.
The creation of the Customs Union involves not only the abolition of customs controls, but also the unification of sanitary and phytosanitary standards. This will allow enterprises of the three countries to sell products certified according to national standards in the markets of the member states of the Customs Union. But the parties have not yet developed uniform rules, so it is difficult to predict when they may come into force. “Theoretically, the unification of these standards should facilitate the access of enterprises from the three countries to each other’s markets. However, harmonization of sanitary and phytosanitary standards will require a long negotiation process,” Irina Tochitskaya, deputy head of the research center of the Belarusian Institute of Privatization and Management, noted in an interview with VN.
However, in trade with Russia, many Belarusian enterprises solved this problem on their own long before the creation of the Customs Union. They produce products that meet both Belarusian and Russian requirements. “Expanding the access of our products to the Russian market will depend only on the activity of our specialists and our company,” Elena Babkina is sure.
As for the new customs rules, many here liked them. Belarusians returning from foreign vacations were the first to appreciate their advantage. The norms for duty-free import of goods have increased from 35 to 50 kg, their total cost can now be 1.5 thousand euros, and not one thousand, as it was before. The norm for duty-free import of alcoholic beverages has also increased - three liters instead of the previous two.
However, there is a whole segment of Belarusian business that suffered from the creation of the Customs Union. Since the beginning of this year, Belarus has raised duties for legal entities on the import of passenger cars to the Russian level. At the same time, individuals can continue to import them under the old rules until July 2011. This hit the interests of official Belarusian car dealers: with the increase in duties, they were forced to raise prices and now cannot compete with citizens importing cars on more favorable terms.
“Official car dealers suffered the most. After all, it is now cheaper for a Belarusian buyer to go to Vilnius and buy a car in a Lithuanian showroom,” Ilya Prokhorov, assistant general director of the international automobile holding Atlant-M, explained to VN. According to him, from January to May, official dealers in Belarus managed to sell 2.2 thousand cars, and “during the same period, almost 7 thousand new cars were registered with the traffic police.” This means that over four thousand cars were imported from abroad.
“Belarus did not benefit from this. What good is it about significant amounts of money being taken out of the country? Russia did not win either, since Belarusians were not interested in the products of the Russian automobile industry. The Lithuanians won. Last year was bad for them due to the crisis, but now there is a chance to improve things. Lithuanian car centers actively advertise themselves on Belarusian websites. I have no doubt that the Lithuanians say thank you to those who introduced the new rules,” our interlocutor complained.