“Gazprom” will give Belarus no discount for integration :: Charter'97 :: News

“We cannot use economically unreasonable schemes even for the sake of such an essential process as integration,” - Chairperson of the committee of directors of “Gazprom” and Russia’s Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in reply to a question posed by a correspondent of the newspaper “Vedomosti” on whether the integration with Belarus can impact the gas pricing.

“We can of course agree on various perspective variants of cooperation, but in general we should keep to adequate economic logics. Are gas supplies within the European states based on non-market terms? No subsidies mechanisms are implemented there. Why then should we use them?” - Chairperson of the committee of directors of the Russian gas giant said.

“We have lost lots of money within the last decade, in the course of the friendly subsidies system. But for some reason, our partners don’t appreciate that. And when “Gazprom” told these countries that it was high time to move towards market prices, they got insulted and threatened with court. Thank God that finally common sense prevailed,” - Chairperson of the committee of directors of “Gazprom” said.

“Indeed, we still use the gradual system of switching to market prices with some of our partners. We hope the process will not get lingered. I hope that in the near future we will establish reasonable market relations will all our partners,” - the Russian Vice Prime Minister remarked.