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Belarus in favor of getting rid of exemptions in EAEU
MINSK, 3 June (BelTA) – Belarus is in favor of reducing the number of exemptions in the Eurasian Economic Union as much as possible. The statement was made by Belarusian Deputy Economy Minister Dmitry Matusevich before an expanded-participation session of the public advisory board for entrepreneurship development under the Belarusian Economy Ministry on 3 June, BelTA has learned. Minister for Economy and Financial Policy of the Eurasian Economic Commission Timur Zhaksylykov took part in the session.
According to Dmitry Matusevich, the session is a good opportunity for Belarus to once again reaffirm its stance. In particular, the official noted that the Eurasian Economic Commission can make its own contribution to the development of Belarus-Russia relations in matters concerning the export of Belarusian goods to the Russian market. “The Eurasian Economic Commission is a supranational body, which is supposed to deal with these matters within the framework of the five member states. Since the body unites all the five member states, the principles should be as universal as possible,” Dmitry Matusevich believes. “Naturally, every country defends its position but Belarus speaks in favor of reducing the number of exemptions as much as possible and in favor of the development of common markets,” he said.
Participants of the session are supposed to discuss results of the Eurasian Economic Commission’s review of the issues raised by representatives of the Belarusian private sector at a similar meeting in 2018. New questions of the Belarusian business community regarding doing business in the Eurasian Economic Union will be presented.
Before the session Timur Zhaksylykov told media what had been done to address the issues raised by representatives of the Belarusian business community one year before. Some of them have already been resolved. “For instance, they’ve raised the matter of privileges granted to suppliers of Russian products to pay insurance in the course of procurement in the Russian Federation. The privileges were not available to suppliers from other partner countries, in particular, from Belarus. The issue was resolved last autumn,” the official said.
“They’ve also raised the matter of software access to central government and municipal government procurement contracts in Russia,” Timur Zhaksylykov specified. “In the past legislation granted access to such contracts only to Russian software vendors while vendors from other countries faced restrictions.” The discriminatory legislation was scrapped in April 2019.
Timur Zhaksylykov also talked about progress in discussing Belarus’ initiative on arranging an evaluation of the regulatory impact in draft international agreements within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union in order to assess their impact on business. “The issue is very topical and timely. The regulations and international agreements being adopted within the framework of our union may have come a long way from those framework and basic agreements that existed several years ago. Now they are enforced as supranational regulations. This is why it would be a good idea to evaluate the regulatory impact. We’ve discussed the idea at a session of the board and forwarded Belarus’ initiative to all the parties. They are now considering it. Kyrgyzstan has already responded. Kyrgyzstan supports the initiative,” Timur Zhaksylykov said.
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