After 18 years, Putin signs Russia into WTO
President Vladimir Putin has signed Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organisation into law, completing an 18-year campaign to join the trade rules club, the Kremlin press office said on Saturday.
Russia’s Upper House of Parliament ratified the country’s WTO entry earlier this month. The $1.9 trillion Russian economy, the world’s ninth largest, will become the WTO’s 156th member 30 days after ratification.
On Tuesday, Russian legislators had voted to ratify accession to the WTO. The Lower House vote, carried by a majority of 30 votes, sealed Russia’s entry to the WTO under a deal reached last December that will oblige Moscow to cut import tariffs and open up key sectors of its economy to foreign investment.
President Putin had long appeared ambivalent about WTO entry but warmed to the process after Russia’s economy was hit hard by the global recession of 2008-09.
The reduction of import tariffs under the WTO deal, from an average 9.5 per cent now to six per cent by 2015, would happen no faster than in other new member states, giving firms time to invest in boosting their competitiveness.
In Washington, trade representative Ron Kirk had urged US legislators to quickly approve permanent normal trade relations, known as PNTR, with Russia by lifting a Cold War-era provision that made favourable US tariffs conditional on the rights of Russian Jews to emigrate freely.
According to the World Bank, WTO entry will bring a boost worth 3.3 per cent of Russian GDP — or $49 billion — in the first three years after joining. Over 10 years, the gain will be worth 11 per cent of GDP, it says.
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