Belarusian authorities on the swing of economic bargaining
Minsk was forced to sign the Customs Code
It was safely discharged only a week after the meeting in St. Petersburg. On April 11, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko finally signed the Customs Code of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and everything immediately began to move. Russia transferred to Belarus the promised loan of one billion dollars. Minsk, in turn, paid off its debt to Gazprom in the amount of 726 million dollars for gas consumed in 2016 — 2017. Only after that, the chairman of the Russian government, Dmitry Medvedev, ordered to increase the supply of oil to the Belarusian refineries and implement the full range of economic agreements reached at the St. Petersburg meeting of presidents.
In it, in particular, the price of Russian natural gas was agreed. During 2018 − 2019, Belarus will pay about a thousand cubic meters of gas on the order of 130 dollars, and by 2020, the parties will develop a new payment formula. Until 2024, annual deliveries to Belarus of 24 million tons of oil will remain. A quarter of this volume of Belarusians will be able to re-export, which will annually bring in the budget of the republic about 500 million dollars of additional income.
This story stretches from last year. Then Minsk accused Moscow that the Belarusian economy had lost 15 billion dollars due to Western sanctions against Russia. Lukashenko insisted that under the current conditions Belarus should receive energy resources at Russian domestic prices, and have other preferences. Having been refused their demands, the Belarusian president did not come to a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in December and did not sign the Customs Code.
The partners in the EAEU rightly regarded this demarche of Lukashenko as just another economic bargaining. Kazakhstan economist Magbat Spanov, for example, said in an interview with 365info: “I think this agreement will be signed until the autumn. Both political and economic factors will be included here. ” Spanov called the decline in commodity turnover between the member countries of the Eurasian Union a temporary trend and predicted an increase in the volume of mutual trade in the next two to three years.
As we see, Belarus signed the Customs Code a lot earlier than the forecast of a Kazakhstan economist, although it was already preparing to “beat the shards”. Not only President Lukashenko led to this. That same December, in Moscow at the session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia, the head of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus, Vladimir Andreichenko, said that the EAEU had become a “political project” and since its launch of 1 in January 2015, it has not made a single “important decision” .
Later, the Prime Minister of Belarus Andrei Kobyakov expressed his portion of criticism of the Eurasian Union at a meeting of the EEU Intergovernmental Council. He questioned the further integration in the economic union, explaining that by rising prices for Russian energy resources. Dmitry Medvedev then advised his colleague not to practice counting, but to remember: “If some countries present here were not part of our union or, imagine, left the union, they would buy gas at European prices now - about 200 dollars per thousand cubic meters. "
Now the disputes have settled. Experts talked that the restoration of trust between Putin and Lukashenko and the positions agreed at the St. Petersburg meeting "are opening a new chapter not only in Belarusian-Russian relations, but also in Eurasian integration."
Path to a dead end?
The good wishes of the expert community exactly three times after the signing of the Customs Code by Belarus broke about the new claims of Alexander Lukashenko expressed by him in Bishkek at a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council. The Belarusian president at the Kyrgyz summit spoke of "internal contradictions in the union, which, according to Lukashenko, have long been growing like a snowball."
“We need to introduce a moratorium on the adoption of new legal acts that are discriminatory against partners in the union. The Eurasian Economic Commission should monitor its implementation, ”the Belarus leader set the tasks for the union partners. He demanded that the commission prepare for the next meeting of the High Council a report on how “the obstacles and restrictions in the domestic market” of the Eurasian Union are being removed. Lukashenko expressed the wish that the intergovernmental council pay more attention to this topic.
The new claims of Alexander Lukashenko showed the experts that the conflict between Moscow and Minsk was only suspended, and not finally resolved. Obviously, the Belarusian authorities are launching another round of economic bargaining; what will be his goal this time is also clear: new benefits and preferences for promoting their products.
Meanwhile, “Belarus itself is very much struggling with imports and creates barriers for products from other countries of the Eurasian Union. If Lukashenko demands the abolition of restrictions from the rest of the countries of this union, of course, one should start with liberalization in Belarus, ”believes Belarusian political scientist Maxim Stefanovich.
It should be noted that the main trading partner of Belarus remains Russia. It accounts for almost half of the republic’s foreign trade. The structure of Belarusian imports from Russia is dominated by supplies of oil, natural gas, petroleum products, and electricity. They constitute 53,4% of the value of Russian goods.
Belarus mainly supplies food products and agricultural raw materials to the Russian market (up to 36% of the supply volume). The second largest in interstate trade is engineering products (24% in total exports). In general, the imbalance of the picture breaks the imbalance of trade. The balance of foreign trade is in favor of Russia in 6-7 billion dollars a year. This is a serious problem for the Belarusian economy.
The Russian government knows it and helps its neighbors as far as possible. Somewhere it podkreditovyvaet economy, somewhere sets preferential tariffs on Russian goods, or, for example, with oil - gives you the opportunity to earn extra money on re-export. Over time, the favor of Moscow in Minsk began to be viewed as a kind of absolute partnership and began to demand more and more new preferences.
Hence the misunderstanding, which the presidents tried to resolve in St. Petersburg. As we see, after the summit in Bishkek, economic contradictions once again came to the interstate agenda. They are not yet formulated in detail, but already indicated. President Lukashenko has launched a new bargaining.
What will it lead to? It is good, if to the next compromise in the form of the conclusion of additional contracts or agreements on mutual concessions. Experts do not exclude that Moscow has already accumulated fatigue from the endless demands of Minsk. She can lead Russian-Belarusian relations to a dead end. This hardly corresponds to the moods and expectations of the peoples of both countries ...
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