OREANDA-NEWS. On 03 April 2009 was announced, that Belarus is currently faced with restrictive measures against its commodities in trade with the U.S., Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Turkey, India and the EU, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Yevdochenko said during a seminar on access to foreign markets in Minsk.

“The measures affected the Belarusian chemical industry, food processing sector, metals and textiles. Belarusian producers report around U.S. USD 70 million in losses annually because of the trade restrictions,” Yevdochenko said.

In 2008 and 2009 the authorities managed to have some of the restrictions lifted, he said.

On January 1, 2009, the EU lifted the quota on 13 out of 33 commodity items subject to limitations. “We have held another round of talks recently to try and have the quotas abolished on January 1, 2010,” Yevdochenko said.

“Ukraine abolished the antidumping quota on Belarusian matches and raised the quota on fiberboards,” Yevdochenko said.

Moldova, for its part, cancelled the quota on Belarusian dairy products and agreed not to impose restrictions on imports of Belarusian confectionery.

As a result of negotiations, the authorities managed to enable additional USD 170 million worth of exports.

Yevdochenko also noted that restrictive measures in trade were coming from a totally new direction: “in the 90s and 2000s most of the measures were initiated by Western Europe and the United States, but now most of them are imposed by our CIS neighbors,” he said.

“There is a free trade area, duty free areas and bans on tariff and non-tariff regulation measures, So antidumping and special protective measures become the key instruments to protect separate branches of economy,” the deputy minister said.