Russian accession to the WTO—why such a long and difficult road?

Abstract

Russia has been negotiating for accession to the WTO for some ten years, and there is still no prospect of an immediate conclusion to the process. The reasons for this are partly to be found in the international environment. In the past, the geo‐strategic concerns of the Western powers have created barriers to Russian integration into global trading structures. Even in the new, post‐September 11 environment, existing WTO members have continued to use the WTO accession process as a way of advancing their own commercial policies vis‐à‐vis Russia. But the main obstacles to speedy accession have been internal. While the Russian government as a whole is strongly in favour of WTO accession as a way of strengthening the market mechanism and reform processes within the country, significant elements within it are equally strongly in favour of high levels of protection for specific sectors, on national security and/or technological/infant industry grounds. While the Russian business community as a whole is divided over the merits of accession, the powerful manufacturing and banking lobbies are demanding levels of protection that would almost certainly be incompatible with accession. Russian views of WTO accession vary widely, within both government and the business community, and anyone who would lobby in favour of accession within Russia must bear this firmly in mind.

Notes

David A. Dyker, Department of Economics, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9SN, UK.

Interview by author of Evgenii Manakin, deputy director of the Department for Trade Policy and Multilateral Negotiations of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation, 28 November 2000.

Interview with Sergei Chemezov, first deputy general director of Rosoboroneksport (arms exporting company), Nezavisimaya gazeta, 11 December 2001.

In August 2002 the EU finally accorded Russia market economy status. This should significantly reduce the incidence of anti‐dumping actions against Russia. WTO membership would offer Russia recourse to the Disputes Settlement Procedure in any such action that did arise.

I.e. in terms of congruity between patterns of factor utilisation and factor endowment.

For a discussion of this concept see Dyker (2000).

Regions.Ru, 18 June 2002.

Theory suggest that the ‘right’ price for Russian energy to domestic users should be based on the long‐run marginal cost of producing energy in Russian conditions, not the world price, however defined. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for pointing this out.

GazetaSNG, 29 October 2002.

GazetaSNG, 11 June 2002.

I.e. services that require a feature of the network itself for their delivery, e.g. call forwarding, caller id, ringback, etc. I am indebted to Ed Steinmueller of SPRU, University of Sussex, for this clarification.

Pravda, 2 July 2003.

See Assotsiyatsiya Rossiiskikh Bankov, Kontseptual'nye osnovy razvitiya bankovskoi sistemy Rossii, May 2000, www.arb.ru/page.php?id=2&d_id=1, Section 8.

Vedomosti, 14 June 2002.

Regions.Ru, 18 June 2002.

Pravda, 18 June 2002.

Izvestiya, 25 July 2002

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David A. Dyker

David A. Dyker, Department of Economics, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9SN, UK.