Russia releases gray trade interception stats from Belarus

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Russia releases gray trade interception stats from Belarus

Russia's agricultural watchdog has released fresh figures to show how seriously it takes the ban on EU produce imports, and its tough stance against third party traders who re-export illegal fruits and vegetables through Belarus. Kremlin sq - Flickr - Pavel Kazachkov

While sources close to www.freshfruitportal.com claim European fruit can regularly be seen in Russian supermarkets, statistics released by the Federal Agency for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Supervision (Rosselkhoznadzor) show around 5% of the produce shipments inspected at the Belarusian border did not pass muster.

The agency did not specify a time period for these interceptions, but a significant portion of the detained lots appears to have been a part of the 'gray trade' for fruits and vegetables that emerged after Russia embargoed food imports from the EU, Norway, the U.S., Canada and Australia in early August.

Rosselkhoznadzor said that since a phytosanitary post was set up for the Smolensk and Bryansk oblasts (regions), it had controlled the trade of 6,760 lots (120,000 metric tons) of produce of which 350 were in "flagrant violation" of customs union laws between the two countries and Kazakhstan; the Central Asian nation would have been the destination for 61 of the banned lots.

More than half of the blocked fruits and vegetables simply did not have phytosanitary documents and labeling, while 14 lots had invalid certificates.

The agency cited 16 cases where Belarus was listed as the country of origin when it fact the imports came from Poland, Israel, the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Spain or Moldova; the latter's produce was banned from Russia prior to the EU-wide ban, along with Polish apples.

The announcement said there were allegedly 26 cases of plant product shipments from Latin America and Africa that were accompanied by re-export certificates from EU countries and Belarus, but did not have the right certificates from the goods' countries of origin.

Rosselkhoznadzor also highlighted six cases of Albanian and Turkish lots with fake certificates.

On Dec. 8, the agency showed its concern over a string of recent forgery cases, including Czech produce marked as Albanian, Dutch re-exports labeled as Chilean, and fake Turkish exports.

As of this week, Albanian produce imports have been banned from Russia due to cases of alleged counterfeit re-exports, while the word's largest country has also sent similar warnings to Switzerland and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Click here for more stories relating to Russia's produce embargo.

Photo: Pavel Kazachkov, via Flick Creative Commons

www.freshfruitportal.com

 

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