Theme 15. Customs Union of Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus

1. Trade and economic cooperation in the CIS and in Central Asia. Experience of integration processes for Kazakhstan in the sphere of international trade.

2. Factors of creation of the Customs union. Purposes, tasks of creation of the Customs union: Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus. Stages of preparation and realization of customs union.

3. Single customs area, single external tariff. Customs union: expenses and benefits for Kazakhstan. Problems and prospects of formation and development of the Customs union.

1. Trade and economic cooperation in the cis and in Central Asia. Experience of integration processes for Kazakhstan in the sphere of international trade

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS; Russian: Содружество Независимых Государств, СНГ, tr. Sodruzhestvo Nezavisimykh Gosudarstv, SNG) is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, formed during the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The CIS is a loose association of states and in no way comparable to a federation, confederation or supranational union such as the European Union. It is more comparable to the Commonwealth of Nations. Although the CIS has few supranational powers, it is aimed at being more than a purely symbolic organization, nominally possessing coordinating powers in the realm of trade, finance, lawmaking, and security. It has also promoted cooperation on cross-border crime prevention. Some of the members of the CIS have established the Eurasian Economic Community with the aim of creating a fully fledged common market.

The organization was founded on 8 December 1991 by the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine, when the leaders of the three countries met in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha Natural Reserve, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Brest in Belarus and signed a Creation Agreement(Russian: Соглашение, Soglasheniye) on the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the creation of CIS as a successor entity to the USSR. At the same time they announced that the new alliance would be open to all republics of the former Soviet Union, as well as other nations sharing the same goals. The CIS charter stated that all the members were sovereign and independent nations and thereby effectively abolished the Soviet Union.

On 21 December 1991, the leaders of eight additional former Soviet Republics - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova,Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – signed the Alma-Ata Protocol and joined the CIS, thus bringing the number of participating countries to 11. Georgia joined two years later, in December 1993. As of that time, 12 of the 15 former Soviet Republics participated in the CIS. The threeBaltic states – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – chose not to join.

Between 2003 and 2005, three CIS member states experienced a change of government in a series of colour revolutions: Eduard Shevardnadze was overthrown in Georgia; Viktor Yushchenko was elected in Ukraine; and Askar Akayev was toppled in Kyrgyzstan. In February 2006, Georgia officially withdrew from the Council of Defense Ministers, with the statement that "Georgia has taken a course to join NATO and it cannot be part of two military structures simultaneously", but it remained a full member of the CIS until August 2009, one year after officially withdrawing in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 South Ossetia war. In March 2007, Igor Ivanov, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, expressed his doubts concerning the usefulness of the CIS, emphasizing that the Eurasian Economic Community was becoming a more competent organization to unify the largest countries of the CIS. Following the withdrawal of Georgia, the presidents of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan skipped the October 2009 meeting of the CIS.

In May 2009, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine joined the Eastern Partnership, a project which was initiated by the European Union (EU).

In 1994, the CIS countries agreed to create a free trade area, but the agreements were never signed, so in 2009 a new agreement was achieved to create an FTA by the beginning of 2011. The 1994 agreement would have covered all twelve then CIS members except Turkmenistan. In October 2011, the new free trade agreement was finally achieved and then signed by eight of the eleven CIS states; Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine at a meeting in St. Petersburg. An agreement was also signed by the CIS prime ministers on the basic principles of currency regulation and currency controls in the CIS at the same meeting. The only CIS states not to sign up to the free trade agreement were Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which will consider signing the agreement later and had requested few weeks to consider the agreement. The agreement itself had been worked out in May 2011 but the signing had been delayed in order to allow for the resolution of disputes by some Asian members of the CIS. The free trade agreement will eliminate export and import duties on a number of goods but also contains a number of exemptions that will ultimately be phased out. However, corruption and bureaucracy are serious problems for trade in CIS countries.

The main reason of economic integration is the aspiration to increase of economic efficiency of production. At interstate level integration happens by formation of regional economic associations of the states and coordination of their domestic and foreign economic policy. Interaction and the mutually adaptation of national farms is shown, first of all, in gradual creation of "common market" - in liberalization of conditions of barter and movement of production resources (the capital, work, information) between the countries.

The Union of the Independent States (UIS) which has united 12 states - all ex-Soviet republics, except the Baltic States was the first attempt of creation on Post-Soviet economic space of the new viable economic block. In 1993 in Moscow all CIS countries signed the contract on creation of the Economic union for formation on market bases of a common economic space.

The Russian-Belarusian relations became the following experience of economic integration. In 1996 Russia and Belarus signed the Contract on formation of community of the sovereign republics, and in 1999 - the Contract on creation of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, with supranational governing body.

The third and most serious approach to integration association is the Euroasian Economic Community (EurAsEC). The Euroasian economic community (EurAsEC, Community) is the international organization into which structure enter the Russian Federation, the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Tajikistan and the Republic of Uzbekistan. The EurAsEC is created for deepening of integration and formation of the Customs union and the Common economic space.

Within EurAsEC positive results in the field of mutual cooperation in the trade and economic sphere, liberalization of mutual trade are received. In trade between the countries of Community being available restrictions are almost eliminated and the free trade regime without withdrawals works. Work on formation of the uniform customs territory, harmonization and standardization of national external economic legislations of member states of EurAsEC is carried out.

The following stage of integration - on a structure of the common economic space meaning the uniform Customs union plus free movement of services, the capital and a manpower. Basic element of the union is the uniform tariff and trade policy concerning the third countries which haven't entered into this tripartite alliance. It will allow to eliminate administrative barriers to free movement of goods in the territory of the countries - participants of the Customs union. Formation of such union assumes establishment of the unified order of customs regulation.

The data is taken from the UN Statistics Division

Country	Population (2012)	GDP 2007 (USD)	GDP 2012 (USD)	GDP growth (2012)	GDP per capita (2007)	GDP per capita (2012)
Belarus	9,460,000	45,275,738,770	58,215,000,000	4.3%	4,656	6,010
Kazakhstan	16,856,000	104,849,915,344	200,642,000,000	5.2%	6,805	11,400
Kyrgyzstan	5,654,800	3,802,570,572	6,197,000,000	0.8%	711	1,100
Russia	143,369,806	1,294,381,844,081	2,021,555,000,000	3.4%	9,119	13,800
Tajikistan	8,010,000	2,265,340,888	7,263,000,000	2.1%	337	900
Uzbekistan	29,874,600	22,355,214,805	51,622,000,000	4.1%	831	1,800
EAEC total	213,223,782	1,465,256,182,498	2,338,852,000,000	-	7,077	9,700
Azerbaijan	9,235,100	33,049,426,816	71,043,000,000	3.8%	3,829	7,500
Georgia	4,585,000	10,172,920,422	15,803,000,000	5.0%	2,334	3,400
Moldova	3,559,500	4,401,137,824	7,589,000,000	4.4%	1,200	2,100
Ukraine	45,553,000	142,719,009,901	180,174,000,000	0.2%	3,083	4,020
GUAM total	62,932,500	186,996,463,870	274,609,000,000	-	2,975	4,200
Armenia	3,274,300	9,204,496,419	10,551,000,000	2.1%	2,996	3,500
Turkmenistan	5,169,660	7,940,143,236	33,466,000,000	6.9%	1,595	6,600
Grand total	284,598,122	1,668,683,151,661	2,629,572,000,000	-	6,005	7,800