Russian Ministry of Finance has developed a new mechanism for charging the Belarusian export duties on crude oil and petroleum products. Moscow is ready to eliminate crude oil duties, but will receive full fees from the Belarusian oil products export as compensation, Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov said.
«We want to get the compensation from Belarus. There is an alternative, which is the duty on petroleum products — its considerable increase will make them pay us all export duties on oil products to be exported from Belarus. The rate of duties on petroleum products is 55% of crude oil duty, which means we are subsidizing oil refining. We do not want to give these grants to Belarusian enterprises,» RIA «Novosti» news agency quoted Deputy Finance Minister.
As explained by the representative of the Russian leadership, according to a new mechanism, export duties on oil products will increase not only for Belarus but also for Russia, where their level is going to be about 85-90% of oil duty.
«One must think, it may be possible to subsidize the modernization of our refineries and then pick up the export tax to be charged by the Belarusians and transferred to our budget,» Sergei Shatalov said.
Russia imposed an export duty on oil to Belarus in January this year, as the Belarusian oil refineries, buying oil at domestic market prices, sold refined petroleum products in Europe. In this case, the export tax on these petroleum products was in the Belarusian budget.
According to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the volume of duty-free oil supplies to Belarus in 2010 is 6.3 million tons, while the extra-volume is, in fact, the re-export potential of Belarus and therefore it is taxed.
The Russian side has repeatedly stated that the complete abolition of oil duties will happen after the signing of all documents to establish the Common Economic Space of the Customs Union (Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan), which is scheduled for launch in 2012.
