Foreign trade in Northwestern Russia reviving
Foreign trade flows passing through the North-West Customs Directorate in January-September this year increased by 40 percent compared with the same period of 2009 and totaled $68.699 billion, the regional customs agency said.
Northwestern Customs Directorate (NWCD) of the Russian Federation has transferred RUB 432.5 billion to the federal budget over the nine first months of 2010. It means that every day NWCD gives RUB 1.5 billion to the budget. The figure has increased by 34 percent comparing to the same period last year.
At a press-conference in Saint-Petersburg Head of the NWCD Nazip Galikeyev presented the report about the customs’ activities from January to September 2010. He said that in the Northwestern district most customs payments to the federal budget are made by the Baltic (44%), Saint-Petersburg (20%), Murmansk (18%) and Kaliningrad (7%) regional customs. In course of the first nine months of 2010 foreign trade turnover through the NWCD increased by 40 percent and amounted to $68.699 billion.
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Exports
The external market preserves its orientation to the far-abroad countries. Their share in the goods turnover is 97%. Goods turnover with the CIS countries has increased by 21% and with the far-abroad countries by 41%. Goods from the region have been exported to 168 countries of the world. The main contractor countries are the Netherlands (29% in terms of value), Great Britain (12%), Switzerland (8%), the USA (6%), and Germany (4%).
Regional export is still mostly focused on raw materials, however there have been some changes in its structure: wood processing products have moved to the fourth position (7.3%) giving the third place to the output of the mechanical engineering (8.4%). The share of mechanical engineering has increased due to export growth within shipbuilding industry. The leader of export is fuel and energy complex products (54% of total export). The second place is occupied by metals and metal goods (21%).
Predominance of this or that type of products in the export structure depends on the specific economic features of the regions: thus, in the Arkhangelsk region, Komi Republic and Karelia most of the export is made by timber-harvesting and wood-processing industries, in the Murmansk region and the Nenets autonomous okrug mostly mineral products and energy sources are exported (gas condensate, crude oil and oil products). In the Murmansk region the second type of export product in terms of value and volume still remains metals and metal goods.
Imports
Goods from 170 countries have been imported in the North-western district. Main contractor countries are China (21%), Germany (11%), the USA (11%), Brazil (5%), and Finland (4%). The structure of import is mostly made up of the products from mechanical engineering (39,5 %), foodstuffs (25,7%), and chemical goods (11,8%).
From January 1 the Federal customs service of the RF must start using 100% electronic declarations when performing export and import operation without accepting paper documents by the customs authorities.
This article was prepared by the staff at the Barents Secretariat’s office in Arkhangelsk.
