Tajikistan to again ask Russia to cancel duty on light petroleum products
DUSHANBE. Dec 28 (Interfax) - A delegation from Tajikistan's Energy and Industry Ministry will meet in Moscow for negotiations on cancelling or lowering the duty on light petroleum product imports to Tajikistan, the ministry said in a statement.
Russia currently supplies up to 90% of Tajikistan's petroleum product imports. Tajikistan does not have its own refineries and produces an insignificant amount of oil - in January-November 2011, the country's oil production grew 2.8% year-on-year to 25,800 tonnes.
The draft intergovernmental agreement to be discussed contains a point on duty-free Russian petroleum product deliveries to Tajikistan to meet the latter country's internal needs. "The Tajik side hopes that this point will be supported by our Russian colleagues. Originally, the draft agreement mentioned 2 million tonnes of light petroleum products, although the Russian side considered these numbers to be excessive, so in the current draft they were reduced by half," the statement said.
The statement does not mention a date for the Moscow meeting, saying only that it should be held by the end of the year.
Russian export duties on light petroleum products have been in effect since the spring of 2010 for all countries not included in the Customs Union, as well as for Kyrgyzstan at a volume of 1 million tonnes per year. In December of this year, the export duty for oil was $406.60 per tonne, for light petroleum products - $268.30 per tonne, and for any type of gasoline - $365.9 per tonne. Since the beginning of the year, the cost of gasoline in Tajikistan has soared 60%, putting substantial pressure on inflation, which was 9.1% in January-November.
In January-November 2011, Tajikistan cut light petroleum product imports by 29.4% year-on-year to 399,960 tonnes. At the same time, the cost of its imports grew 5.5% to $406.6 million, which is 14.1% of all of Tajikistan's imports for the 11 months.
LLC Gazpromneft Tajikistan, which is 100% owned by Russian company Gazprom Neft , accounts for up to 90% of Tajikistan's petroleum product imports.