Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
Russia has no plans of lifting embargo on more foods
Russia’s government has made a decision to lift the food embargo regime and allow imports of poultry, beef and vegetables used in baby foods manufacturing.
However, the Russian government does not plan to further cut the list of sanctioned products, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich told reporters.
"It is not planned," he said.
According to him, the decision to remove products for production of baby food from the list has been prepared for a long time.
"There was nothing surprising about it," he said.
"Our country has capacities to produce baby food from organic raw materials. The decision is aimed at this. We don’t have our own organic materials, really, we don’t, but I just stress it - this is a very narrow segment of organic raw materials," the official said.
According to him, this measure will not lead to the penetration of these products to the "black market".
"No, we have a very firm intention to control the import of organic raw material for specific enterprises."
On Wednesday, it became known that the Russian government had decided to facilitate food embargo mode and allow imports of beef, poultry and vegetables, which will be used for the production of baby food.
Russia’s government has made a decision to lift the food embargo regime and allow imports of poultry, beef and vegetables used in baby foods manufacturing. Cattle meat, poultry meat and by-products as well as frozen and dried vegetables aimed for baby foods manufacturing have been removed from the embargo list.
In August 2014, Russia restricted imports of food products from the EU countries, the United States, Canada, Australia and Norway. On June 24, 2015 President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on extending the food embargo through August 5, 2016. According to the document, the Russian government excluded young mussels, spat and young trout from the food embargo list. Additionally, the Russian Government toughened requirements for lactose-free production in the framework of the food embargo. The rest of the list (includes beef, chicken, pork, dairy products, live, chilled and frozen fish and shellfish, nuts, fruits and vegetables) subject to counter-sanctions remained unchanged. Biologically active dietary supplements, sports, children's and preventive nutrition, salmon spawn, potatoes seed, planting onion, sugar beet and peas for planting have also been excluded from the list. Russia has also widened the list of countries subject to the food embargo by adding the Albanian Republic, Montenegro, Iceland and the Principality of Liechtenstein.