Russian Quotas Likely to Stay Through 2017

Russian Quotas Likely to Stay Through 2017

Russia could keep its current system of meat import quotas until 2017, the head of AgroPromSoyuz, Ivan Obolentsev, recently told a European business group.

“Most probably our policy will come to still sticking to the reduction of meat imports to the Russian market,” Obolentsev was quoted by Russia’s Tass News Agency. He reminded European and American importers that Russian and foreign investors have put billions of dollars into “the formation” of the Russian meat industry and the Russian government had added billions of rubles.

After 2017, he said, Russia may regulate meat imports with customs duties of less than 30 percent.

Russia has applied quotas on meat imports since 2003. The quotas for beef, pork and poultry are allocated according to importers’ import performance in the preceding three years.

The total 2009 quota for U.S. beef, which is largely unchanged from last year, is 18,500 metric tons (40.8 million pounds) out of a total of 450,000 metric tons (992 million pounds). The quota for U.S. pork - 100,000 metric tons (220.5 million pounds) out of a total of 531,920 metric tons (1.17 billion pounds) – has essentially doubled in size over 2008. A number of factors such as plant delistings, suspensions related to H1N1 influenza, and the weakened Russian currency, however, has reduced exports of U.S. pork to Russia by about 35 percent compared to the first half of 2008.

Russian Quotas Likely to Stay Through 2017

Russia could keep its current system of meat import quotas until 2017, the head of AgroPromSoyuz, Ivan Obolentsev, recently told a European business group.

“Most probably our policy will come to still sticking to the reduction of meat imports to the Russian market,” Obolentsev was quoted by Russia’s Tass News Agency. He reminded European and American importers that Russian and foreign investors have put billions of dollars into “the formation” of the Russian meat industry and the Russian government had added billions of rubles.

After 2017, he said, Russia may regulate meat imports with customs duties of less than 30 percent.

Russia has applied quotas on meat imports since 2003. The quotas for beef, pork and poultry are allocated according to importers’ import performance in the preceding three years.

The total 2009 quota for U.S. beef, which is largely unchanged from last year, is 18,500 metric tons (40.8 million pounds) out of a total of 450,000 metric tons (992 million pounds). The quota for U.S. pork - 100,000 metric tons (220.5 million pounds) out of a total of 531,920 metric tons (1.17 billion pounds) – has essentially doubled in size over 2008. A number of factors such as plant delistings, suspensions related to H1N1 influenza, and the weakened Russian currency, however, has reduced exports of U.S. pork to Russia by about 35 percent compared to the first half of 2008.