Russia persuades its partners in the Customs Union to postpone full liberalization of oil trade

A meeting of Prime Ministers of the three countries of the Customs Union took place in Moscow on Tuesday. In particular, they tentatively agreed to retain the current tariff and non-tariff barriers in the mutual trade in 2015, two federal official that rae familiar with the negotiations told the Vedomosti.

Press secretary for the Russian Prime Minister Natalia Timakova didn’t answer for he question of the Vedomosti, the newspaper also couldn’t get comments of her colleagues from Kazakhstan and Belarus yesterday.

Today, the only significant limitation in the commodities trade is export duties on oil and oil products, Natalya Volchkova of the Russian Economic School said. Duty-free oil is supplied to Belarus on quota: in 2013 - 20.9 million tons, an agreement on the first half of 2014 provides for 11.5 million tons. In exchange Belarus returns the duty on exports of Belarusian oil products, made from Russian oil. As for Kazakhstan, it supplied oil in exchange for duty-free Russian oil; and export duty on it should remain in the Russian budget.