The meeting participants discussed the results of Russia’s first year of membership in the World Trade Organisation and tasks for the future.
Opening remarks by Dmitry Medvedev:
Colleagues, over a year ago, in August 2012, our country became a full-fledged member of the World Trade Organisation. Of course, 12 months is too short a time to sum up any conclusive results, but, clearly, the most unfavourable predictions regarding Russia's membership in the World Trade Organisation have not come true. Gloomy pictures of a collapsing economy or individual sectors were speculative in nature and do not describe the current situation.
The overall increase in the Russian economy’s competitiveness is arguably the main positive effect of Russia's accession to the World Trade Organisation. However, it will take time for these changes to have a true impact on the situation. We have made only the first steps, albeit important ones. I will outline several important points.
The first point concerns the implementation of our commitments. It’s important that this process is conducted according to schedule. New regulations, new sanitary and phytosanitary policies and customs issues are next in line.
Second, as you may be aware, the differentiated reduction of import customs duties in order to ensure the adaptation of our economy to the new environment was one of the main conditions of our country's accession to the World Trade Organisation. Potential risks for individual industries, companies and measures to reduce these risks have been the focus of our discussions at various stages and in different places.
We are aware of the problem areas, such as agriculture, agricultural engineering, the light industry, the food industry and the automotive industry. We will continue to provide system-wide support to these industries in full compliance with the regulations of the World Trade Organisation. All necessary changes have been made in order to adjust the support mechanisms in the industry and agricultural machine engineering.
Dmitry Medvedev: We must advance our positions and build up our presence on the international markets, including in the areas that are new to the WTO, such as investment regulations, intellectual property, and public procurement.
Nevertheless, it’s important to continue to monitor the commodity markets and keep an eye on the items that our people are most sensitive to, especially food.
Following suggestions of the business community, Duma deputies and experts, the Government has been implementing, since October 2012, an action plan designed to adapt certain industries to working within the WTO. The vast majority of our commitments provide for a transition period lasting up to seven years for some products. Time goes by. We need to have a clear understanding of how our participation in the WTO impacts the activities of our companies, because the mere fact of our membership does not automatically make our goods more competitive or more popular on foreign markets. Our companies need to learn to work amid conditions of higher competition and focus primarily on reducing costs, modernising production processes, introducing innovative energy-efficient technologies and improving the management and logistics processes.
Third, it’s important to properly take advantage of the opportunities offered by WTO membership and make good use of the authorised mechanisms and procedures, including the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body. Complaints are being filed against us through this body, and we must be prepared to initiate appropriate talks to address these complaints. The WTO operates on the following principle: if you don’t resist, you’ll be taken advantage of, just like in any other situation anywhere in the world. So, if there are complaints against us, justified or not so justified, we should be prepared to respond to them and, in turn, file our own claims. Where necessary, we should conduct negotiations and be able to come up with the appropriate arguments.
Our primary objective is to eliminate unjustified trade restrictions that apply to Russia. In fact, some of these restrictions are still at variance with the general rules of the World Trade Organisation. Some of them directly affect the interests of our investors and exporters.
Clearly, the work that is being done on the inside is somewhat more complex than accession talks, although we’ve had our fair share of them as well during the 17 years that they lasted. The inside work is, of course, still more complex, but we must advance our positions and build up our presence on the international markets, including in the areas that are new to the WTO, such as investment regulations, intellectual property, and public procurement, where the solutions are not found yet, but where work and active discussions are underway.
By the way, I hope that creating a full-fledged Russian permanent representative office at the World Trade Organisation will make this work more systematic and consistent, and will allow us to work on equal footing with our partners who have extensive experience working in the World Trade Organisation. The necessary arrangements must be completed before the end of 2013. We need to think about how to properly staff this new entity with trained professionals and provide adequate expert support.
At some point in time, we even decided to increase the ministry’s staff. Clearly, increasing staff is easier than finding the right people. Nevertheless, the unit that was created specifically for these purposes must be operational.
There’s one more point that I’d like to make. As we deal with WTO issues, we shouldn’t lose sight of other global economic processes. I’m referring to multilateral formats of trade and economic cooperation, negotiations that are conducted by various participants of foreign economic activity, including the United States, the European Union and some of our partners, regarding the formation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I'm not providing any political assessments, but it’s clearly dictated by various economic considerations. Anyway, we realise that the implementation of such initiatives, be it Ukraine joining the free trade zone and creating association mechanisms with the European Union or larger partnerships that I just mentioned, seriously affects our foreign economic interests. This is not always a bad influence. It can even be very advantageous, but in any case, we must assess what’s happening in the world, evaluate the alliances that are being formed, and keep track of all these issues. This is all the more important, since we are not only faced with the difficulties related to the current phase of the global economy, but we, in fact, have some good things to show as well. A change in the rankings was made public today. Even though our attitude toward the rankings is fairly cool, we are still mindful of the existing trends and we have our own economic goals. Certainly, such forward progress in the Doing Business rankings is a welcome development for our economy, which I hope is the result of the joint efforts of the Government and the business community. I hope that this will translate into more than just a change in the rankings, and will spill over into the real economy.
<…>