Belarus to lose $100mn due to Rosselkhoznadzor's sanctions

A ban on the import of Belarusian products to Russia will hit the country's revenues.

Belarus risks to lose about $100 million, BelTA cites Leanid Marynich, the first deputy minister of agriculture and food, as saying on the air of STV.

Rosselkhoznadzor imposed a temporary ban in late November on the import of products of more than 15 Belarusian enterprises. “If the situation develops like that and our enterprises don't work, we will lose nearly $100 million,” Leanid Marynich noted.

Aliaksei Bahdanau, the head of the main foreign economic department of the Belarusian Ministry of Agriculture and Food, denied allegations that Belarus had sharply increased deliveries of products made from raw materials that were bought from the countries hit by the Russian sanctions. He explained the situation on the example of dairy products. “We imported only 2.5-3% of the total volume of milk produced in Belarus. It's a drop in the ocean,” the department head said. “We bought foreign raw materials to make mostly cheese. We were selling these products in the Belarusian market and exporting them to Russia and Kazakhstan.” It's worth noting that the countries earlier agreed that Belarus could sell Russia the products made from foreign raw materials.

Aliaksei Bahdanau stressed that the current volume of supplies did not exceed that of last year, though the countries agreed on higher supplies. Belarus quota for dairy products was 3,100,000 tones this year. The country delivered 87% of the planned volume in January-October. Belarus sold 79% of its meat and 91% of fish quota. “We do not compete with Russian producers of finished goods,because we replace the products that Russia lacks after they disappeared from Russian shops,” the representative of the Ministry of Agriculture noted.

Russia says the transit of fruit and vegetables to Kazakhstan through Belarus continues despite the fact that such products can be brought into Russia only through border crossing checkpoints. Belarus insists it does not have the right to restrict the transit of EU products to Kazakhstan through Russia. Representatives of the Russian delegation asked to present Minsk's official position on the issue by December 1, 2014.