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Russia’s accession to the WTO cleared a major hurdle when the WTO Working Party on its accession approved, ad referendum on 10 November 2011, the package spelling out Russia’s terms of entry to the organization. The Working Party will now send its accession recommendation to the 15 —17 December Ministerial Conference, where Ministers are expected to approve the documents and accept Russia as a WTO Member.
As part of the accession accord, Russia has agreed to undertake a series of important commitments to further open its trade regime and accelerate its integration in the world economy. The Russian Federation’s commitments will include, among others, the following:
Market access for goods and services
As part of the accession, Russia concluded 30 bilateral agreements on market access for services and 57 on market access for goods.
On average, the final legally binding tariff ceiling for the Russian Federation will be 7.8% compared with a 20111 average of 10% for all products:
• The average tariff ceiling for agriculture products will be 10.8%, lower than the current average of 13.2%
• The ceiling average for manufactured goods will be 7.3% vs. the 9.5% average today on manufactured imports.
The final bound rate will be implemented on the date of accession for more than one third of national tariff lines with another quarter of the tariff cuts to be put in place three years later. The longest implementation period is 8 years for pork, followed by 7 years for motor cars, helicopters and civil aircraft.
Tariff rate quotas (TRQs) would be applied to beef, pork, poultry and some whey products.
Imports entering the market within the quota will face lower tariffs while higher duties will be applied to products imported outside the quota.
The in-quota and out of quota rates are listed below with the out of quota rates in parentheses:
• For beef 15% (and 55%)
• For pork zero (and 65%). The TRQ for pork will be replaced by a flat top rate of 25% as of 1 January 2020.
• 25% (and 80%) for some selected poultry products
• 10% (and 15%) for some whey products
• Some of these quotas are also subject to member-specific allocations
Thursday November 10, 2011/ WTO.
http://www.wto.org/
