EEC Minister Veronika Nikishina: "For exporters to enter new markets, countries should develop a system of free trade agreements."

"Today the world is witnessing a widespread regionalization. Take Southeaster Asia, for example. In the 20 recent years, the countries of this region have concluded a number of trade agreements. And, we are not talking about simple abolition of duties. Rather, those agreements stipulate more liberal trade regimes for the signatories to compare to the regime under which Russian exporters operate. Russian producers looking to roll their products to this market have to pay 20-30% import customs duties. That means that Russian exporters willing to compete in this market have a serious entry barrier. Unless we make some drastic changes, no interest rate subsidy would make our products more competitive," said the representative of EEC.
Mrs. Nikishina holds that for Russian exporters to enter new markets, new free trade agreements must be signed with other countries."
"The development of a system of free trade agreements will not only give our manufactured goods a cutting edge, but will also increase exports manifold basically at no extra costs for the budget. If we want to export more manufactured goods, such agreements will be a great help not only in terms of successful overcoming of entry barriers, but also in terms of amplification of the non-tariff liberalization of export operations. Therefore, if we really want to expand our export operations, we must give the issue of bilateral abolition of import duties a serious thought. But to do that, we would need to first identify export interests for specific goods, create a sort of "integration map," see what countries we want to trade with and on what terms and figure out what our expenses would amount to," said Veronika Nikishina.
She also added that in the current situation, Russia could test this cooperation approach in application to such countries as Israel, South Korea, Egypt, Singapore, India and Iran, i.e., the countries, which Russia treats as amicable countries importing its goods or supplying products band from export to Russia by some countries of the west.
Participants of the Panel Discussion shared their opinions on the creation of multifaceted instruments able to support exporters in Russia and discussed such aspects as effective use of the regions' export potential, hurdling of barriers hindering the exit of production to foreign markets, competent use of financial and non-financial support instruments. Participants put special emphasis on the role of administrations of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in the support of Russian exporters.
Attending the Panel Session were Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation Denis Manturov, First Deputy Head of the Russian Government Executive Office Maxim Akimov, Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation Alexey Likhachev, General Director of the Russian Export Center Petr Fradkov, governors of Russian regions, representatives of major Russian exporting companies.
The Russian Export Center (REC) and the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation acted in the capacity of organizers of the Panel Discussion.
Press-release at the official Eurasian Economic Commission web-site