Russian WTO entry implicates poultry import quotas
Russia will reduce pork and poultry import quotas after it gains entry to the World Trade Organization, Russian news agency, RIA Novosti said, citing Andrei Slepnyov, the country’s deputy economy minister.
Frozen chicken and turkey quotas will both be 80,000 tonnes in 2012, this year it was 350,000 tonnes for frozen poultry.
Russia, the largest economy outside the global trade arbiter, has sought entry since 1993, exceeding China’s 15-year wait for membership. The last country to join the Geneva-based WTO was Ukraine in 2008. Experts say one major obstacle remains to Russia’s WTO membership and that is Georgia’s opposition to it. Under WTO rules, any member can block a new country from joining simply by vetoing it, because the organization operates by consensus.
