Like other business representative bodies, TheCityUK greatly welcomes Russian accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). As part of its accession, Russia has initiated a number of measures designed to open up its economy, including tariff reductions on a range of industrial goods and measures to liberalise the Russian services sector, including phased liberalisation of the Russian financial and professional services sectors.
The announcement of Russia's forthcoming accession to the WTO was one of the highlights of last December's WTO Ministerial Conference. Formal accession required a number of constitutional procedures including a vote by the Russian Federation's State Duma, which formally ratified Russia's WTO accession on 10 July 2012. The relevant legislation was signed by President Putin on 21 July 2012, allowing Russia to take its place as the WTO's 156th member on 22 August 2012.
TheCityUK has special reason to welcome Russian accession, because TheCityUK is itself involved in an important UK-Russia partnership: the project for Moscow as an International Financial Centre (MIFC). This project, initiated by the Russian authorities some time ago, has been made the subject of a special partnership between TheCityUK, the City of London and the Russian authorities. The partnership was initiated by the then Lord Mayor of London and his Russian counterpart (Mr Alexander Voloshin) in 2011, and is being taken forward by a Joint Liaison Group (JLG), which meets every six months in London and Moscow alternately. The last JLG meeting took place in Moscow on 2 July 2012, and was the occasion for reviewing successes already achieved in work-streams ranging across securities, dispute resolution, public-private partnerships, marketing, regulation, qualifications, and long-term finance solutions. The next JLG meeting will be hosted in London at the end of 2012.
TheCityUK also has a special interest in Russian accession to the WTO due to the work of its Liberalisation of Trade in Services (LOTIS) Committee and its Russia Group. The LOTIS Committee has been following the progress of the accession negotiations for many years, and welcomes the step taken by Russia in joining the WTO, thereby signally its desire to take forward its trade and commercial policies within the global rules-based system that the WTO exists to promote.
As in the case of many other WTO accessions, Russian accession is a sequenced process requiring a series of phased market-opening steps. TheCityUK and its members look forward to the market-opening that will ensue. TheCityUK's Russia, CIS and Mongolia Group is determined to work with Russian counterparts towards exploiting trade and investment opportunities in the interests of the shared goal of global economic growth and wealth-creation that the WTO stands for.
