April 5 2005, 14:31 APK-Inform

Ukraine's gvt. gave consent not to decrease import duties for some agriproducts - a parliamentary

Ukrainian government agreed with the proposal of parliamentaries not to decrease import duties for dairy goods, grains, oilseeds, cane-origin raw sugar and sugar syrup, People's Deputy of Ukraine Kateryna Vashchuk said to a press conference Tuesday. She said the exceptions were in the dairy group - infant food, in the grain group - rice. For vegetables it is proposed to introduce seasonal duty (from January till May).

Besides that, an agreement has been reached between the government and parliament that the bill about reduction of import tariffs will be passed in a package with a bill about restrictions for imports of substandard quality goods to Ukraine. At the moment this document has not been developed yet, but it is supposed to contain amendments to the Laws of veterinary medicine and of food products quality.

Ms. Vashchuk said that a consent of Ukraine's PM Yulia Timoshenko had been received for funding a purchase of a special-purpose laboratory from the reserve fund of Cabinet of Ministers. The laboratory will provide control over imported products, check them for presence of bio-stimulators and GM substances. She said the cost of the laboratory was $16 million.

She noted that the initial variant of the bill about reduction of import duties had hardly had a chance to be passed by Verkhovna Rada. She said that negotiations on the issue were still in progress. The next meeting of the working group is scheduled for April 6.

As it has been earlier reported, on March 15 a governmental bill was submitted for examination to parliament about significant reduction of import duties for goods of Groups 1-24 of Ukrainian Foreign Trade Commodity Classification (foodstuffs and agriproducts). The bill also proposed to set the full rates of the duties on the level of currently effective privileged ones.