The Armenian government will receive $84 million in assistance from the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) to bring domestic customs legislation and procedures into conformity with EEU standards, Finance Minister Gagik Khachatrian revealed on Tuesday.
Khachatrian said the money will be spent on drafting and enacting amendments to relevant Armenian laws and helping the national customs service quickly adapt to the EEU’s requirements. It will also be channeled into the Armenian state budget, he said.
“Right now we are working on 240 customs regulations. This is a quite complex and difficult process,” Khachatrian told reporters.
He also said that the EEU also plans to deploy its representatives at the customs posts on Armenia’s borders with Georgia and Iran.
Membership in the EEU will require Armenia to gradually adopt by 2020 considerably higher duties that are levied by its three member states -- Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan -- from goods imported from other countries. Also, import duties collected by the Armenian customs will have to be transferred to the EEU budget. Armenia will then be entitled to receiving roughly 1.5 percent of the bloc’s total customs revenue.
President Serzh Sarkisian and his Russian, Belarusian and Kazakh counterparts signed a treaty on Armenia’s accession to the EEU at a summit last month. It needs to be ratified by the parliaments of all four ex-Soviet states in order to take effect.
The Armenian parliament will debate and almost certainly approve the treaty later this month. Sarkisian on Monday expressed hope that the parliaments of the three EEU member states will follow suit before January.