Kazakhstan is offered to pay tribute – Newspaper Kommersant No. 12 (7457) dated 01.24.

The release of the Russian customs following the visit of the Deputy Head of the Federal Customs Service Ruslan Davydov to Astana for a meeting of representatives of the customs authorities of the EAEU contains a mention of progress in resolving a long-standing sore point in the internal market of the union – the possibility of exchanging data on goods that Kazakhstan imports at reduced tariffs compared to common for the EAEU tariffs. The difference arose due to the accession of Kazakhstan to the WTO – the Russian Federation demanded additional duties on the export of a number of goods from Kazakhstan, but the common domestic market did not allow this. The digitalization of customs, however, provides new opportunities, and the loss of FCS revenue due to sanctions makes the topic relevant.

The main event at the meeting of customs officers of the EAEU was the demonstration of the Kazakhstani system for accounting for goods “Traceability Passport”, the FCS reported yesterday, specifying that “processes were presented for implementing automated control of assurance of deliveries when exporting from the republic to other countries of the EAEU” be applied rates different from the common customs tariffs of the Union. The Federal Customs Service proposed to consider the issue of expanding the “data mart” — including through information from declarations for goods — and to implement in the system the function of “redemption” of the traceability passport “during control by the authorized bodies of the EAEU states” — this is necessary to control the payment of the difference in duties . “For the first time, the parties recognized the need for … mutual improvement of information systems. This will ensure transparency and increase the effectiveness of control over the legality of the movement of “goods with withdrawal” from the Republic of Kazakhstan to other countries of the union,” Ruslan Davydov said after the meeting.

The difference in tariffs is caused by differences in the conditions for accession to the WTO of the Russian Federation (they became the basis of the Common Customs Tariff of the EAEU) and Kazakhstan – it has lower import duties under an agreement with the WTO, and due to the gradual reduction of tariffs prescribed in agreements on accession to the organization, the list of goods , for which Kazakhstan has lower duties, is expanding over time. So, with the last major reduction in tariffs (see “Kommersant” dated July 23, 2017), it increased from 1347 to 1914 positions – and unification may take about five more years.

The authorities of the Russian Federation are afraid of the flow of goods from China through Kazakhstan at lower rates. In the Russian Federation, they insisted on labeling such “under-cleared” goods from the point of view of the EAEU, the EEC proposed creating a unified system for their accounting, while the Kazakh side referred to small volumes of such imports (about 10% of all imports) and a small part of the Russian budget, which is duties – therefore there has been no de facto progress in solving the problem in the last five years. However, after the start of the military operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, the import of goods through the EAEU countries became critically important, which was also reflected in customs statistics. So, in January-November 2022, the balance of foreign trade of Kazakhstan increased by 1.8 times, to $33 billion. The import of goods to the Russian Federation fell due to sanctions and the voluntary refusal of suppliers to work with Russian counterparties – in 2022, customs losses amounted to about 1 trillion rubles (see Kommersant of January 23). Cheaper “Kazakh imports” now not only threaten Russian budget revenues, but also increase the republic’s gain as one of the main directions for the supply of foreign goods to the Russian Federation (including parallel imports).

The Federal Customs Service confirmed to Kommersant yesterday that the report of the service refers specifically to the traceability of goods from the “list of seizures”. It is not known what concessions Russia made – however, recently Moscow, for example, renounced control in the Eurasian Development Bank, ceding to Astana a significant share of its shares (see Kommersant on January 17) – about $ 300 million – with a delay in their payment.

Oleg Sapozhkov, Tatyana Edovina