Single customs space wasn’t even discussed in Minsk

A source in PRIME TASS refutes reports of Lukashenka’s press-service about creation of a single customs territory.

“In the first half of the next year states are to solve all the problems and join one customs territory (the matter concerns one customs, not one economic area). Since July 1, 2010 a single customs territory of the three countries starts functioning,” the press-service informed.

As a source of PRIME-TASS close to the talks informed, creation of a common customs area is one of the basic principles for functioning of the Customs Union, and to create such an area, the three countries should sign an agreement about that, which wasn’t signed on November 27 in Minsk because the sides were not ready.

“The agreement on the single economic space was not even considered in the package of documents for signing, as during negotiation process on the Customs Union creation an agreement on terms of the single customs territory creation wasn’t reached,” the source informed.

He explained that the meaning of the single customs territory is transferring customs control to external borders of the Customs Union, however the Russian side hadn’t agreed upon this issue yet.

“In fact, Russians are in favour of the single customs tariff, which is to come in force since January 1, 2010 and will make their goods competitive at markets of Belarus and Kazakhstan as compared to goods of the third countries, and does not want to agree to create a single customs’ territory, as for instance Chinese goods would be freely imported to Russia from Kazakhstan then,” the expert said.

“That’s in fact what Belarus has now, when unscrupulous participants of foreign trade are importing Chinese goods to our territory from Russia as Russian goods in the conditions when customs clearance is not required (with false certificates of origin),” the expert explained.