Russia slashes tariff-rate quota of poultry and pork imports

 

 

Russia earlier announced that it would reduce both the overall tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) for imported pork and poultry, and also the specific US allocation within those two TRQs this year.

 

This is being done in an attempt to help further develop Russian industries in these areas, sources said.

 

A US official said the US pushed for a greater US allocation within the overall poultry TRQ than the 600,000 tonnes that Russia announced last month. The 2010 global poultry TRQ is set at 780,000 tonnes.

 

Both numbers represent a decrease from 2009, when the overall poultry TRQ was set at 952,000 tonnes and the US allocation was set at 750,000 tonnes.

 

The amount of US allocations within the overall Russian quotas for pork and poultry are important because although US exporters face tariffs for shipments made within the quota allocation, Russia imposes much higher out-of-quota tariffs, sources said.

 

The situation for poultry exporters is set to worsen in 2011 and 2012, as Russia has announced that it will shrink the global poultry TRQ to 600,000 tonnes, of which the US is allocated 446,400 tonnes. In 2012, the global TRQ further shrinks to 550,000 tonnes, with a US allocation of 409,200 tonnes, according to an informal translation of a December 21 Russia decree.

 

Sources said that poultry industry representatives have also made the suggestion that the US could tell Russia that a failure to negotiate could hamper US support for Russian accession to the World Trade Organization.

 

On pork, Russia slashed the US share of the global TRQ from 100,000 tonnes in 2009 to only 57,500 tonnes in 2010. The US share would be set again at 57,500 tonnes in 2011, and then further reduced to 51,600 tonnes in 2012.

 

The global TRQ for pork in 2010 and 2011 is set at 472,100 tonnes for each year, and in 2012 this is reduced to 425,100 tonnes. By contrast, the global TRQ for pork in 2009 was set at 531,900 tonnes, one source said.

 

However, the reduction to the US allocation for pork represents a return to approximately what the US allocation has been historically, as the 2009 US pork allocation was unusually high, sources conceded. One source said the US TRQ allocation for pork in 2008 was only 49,800 tonnes.

 

Russia has also set up a separate global TRQ for pork trimmings, something that is supported by US pork exporters. Russia had a separate TRQ for trimmings in 2008, but then abolished it in 2009 when the US was granted a much larger pork TRQ, forcing any trimmings exports to fall under the general TRQ.

 

In particular, Russia announced pork trimmings TRQ for all countries set at 27,900 tonnes in 2010, 27,900 tonnes in 2011, and then 24,600 tonnes in 2012, sources said.

 

Sources said the in-quota tariff rate on pork in Russia is set at 15%, whereas the out-of-quota rate is set at 75%, which is prohibitively high for hams and loins, although not so for fats and offal. In 2008, the out-of-quota rate was only 60%, sources said.

 

Poultry faces an over-quota tariff rate of about 80 percent and an in-quota tariff rate of about 15%, one industry source estimated.