Transit through Belarus
Russia cuts shortcut dairy
Russia will apply an import ban on dairy products from Belarus from Tuesday 6 March. With this, the country is showing its main supplier of dairy products the door. The official reason: the quality leaves much to be desired. However, this reason is highly doubted.
The import ban, announced by Rosselkhoznadzor (the Russian phytosanitary service), includes pasteurized milk (concentrate), cream and whey powder. Besides the fact that the dairy products are said to be of poor quality, Russia has doubts about its origin. It is said that imports from Belarus are regularly tampered with.
Moscow suspects that European dairy products, which have been banned from Russia since 2014, still enter the country via shortcuts in Belarus. This, in combination with the poor quality, justifies the import ban, according to Russian agriculture minister Alexander Tkachov. Initially, the (temporary) import ban would apply from 26 February; this has now been postponed to Tuesday, March 6, Reuters reported.
Political reasons
However, the Russian motivation behind the import ban is highly doubted; also by the Russians themselves. For example, Vadim Semikin (milk expert at the agricultural market institute in Moscow) thinks that the import ban is mainly used to protect their own market. For example, Belarus has already cut the export prices of skimmed milk powder twice this year, making Russian dairies no longer able to compete.
The import ban also relates to large dairy volumes. Belarus is by far the most important dairy supplier in Russia. About 79% of imported dairy comes from Belarus. In 2017, Russia imported 295.000 tons of liquid milk products and 125.000 tons of skimmed milk powder. This means that Russia is still one of the largest dairy importers in the world, although the country is being challenged on all agricultural fronts more self-sufficient.
Belarus: a lot of throughput
In the field of liquid milk products, Belarus is the world's largest exporter after the European Union. Indeed, these figures suggest that Belarus mainly transits a lot of dairy products, as the country is not in the top 10 largest producers.
Wouter Job
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