Publication: Impact of WTO Accession and the Customs Union on the Bound and Applied Tariff Rates of the Russian Federation
Date
2012-08
ISSN
Published
2012-08
Author(s)
Shepotylo, Oleksandr
Tarr, David G.
Abstract
After 18 years of negotiations, Russia
has joined the World Trade Organization. This paper assesses
how the tariff structure of the Russian Federation will
change as a result of the phased implementation of its World
Trade Organization commitments between 2012 and 2020 and how
it has changed as a result of its agreement to participate
in a Customs Union with Kazakhstan and Belarus. The
analysis uses trade data at the ten digit level, which
allows the first accurate assessment of the impact of these
policy changes. It finds that World Trade Organization
commitments will progressively and significantly lower the
applied tariffs of the Russian Federation. After all
commitments are implemented, tariffs will fall from 11.5
percent to 7.9 percent on an un-weighted average basis, or
from 13.0 percent to 5.8 percent on a weighted average
basis. The average "bound" tariff rate of Russia
under its World Trade Organization commitments will be 8.6
percent, that is, 0.7 percentage points higher than the
applied tariffs. Russia's commitments represent
significant tariff liberalization, but compared with other
countries that have acceded to the World Trade Organization,
the commitments of the Russian Federation are not unusual,
especially when compared with the Transition countries.
Citation
“Shepotylo, Oleksandr; Tarr, David G.. 2012. Impact of WTO Accession and the Customs Union on the Bound and Applied Tariff Rates of the Russian Federation. Policy Research working paper;no. 6161. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/f74b059d-db57-53f4-965d-c936a1f4e406 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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