Alternative measures of state support are required
What should the participants of SEZ expect after 1st of January 2017?
Should they be within the frames of the EAEU and the WTO?
From 1st of January 2017 for participants registered before 1st of January 2012, during the export of goods from SEZ to the rest of the customs territory of the Customs Union, will also be applied rules of payment of import duties.
These are the conditions of the Agreement on special economic zones in the customs territory of the Customs Union and customs procedure for special customs zones, adopted in St. Petersburg in June 2010.
In this regard, the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs of Kazakhstan "Atameken" organized a conference call to explain the local entrepreneurs the abolition of import customs exemptions, and tell how SEZ will develop after January 1, 2017.
The meeting was attended by representatives of the Ministry of Economy, JSC “KAZNEXINVEST”, sectoral business associations, management companies and participants of all ten SEZ, receiving import customs benefits, as well as regional chambers of entrepreneurs.
As it was explained by the representative of the Ministry of Economy, on the territory of SEZ after 1st of January 2017 will be retained all the tax concessions (exemption from CIT, property tax, land tax, social security tax (only for SEZ "PIT")), except for import customs benefits that in compliance with the WTO and the EAEU rules will be abolished, as well as an extension of their action is also impossible.
However, as it was noted, in the current environment, most participants of SEZ experience economic difficulties, in their opinion, they may suffer significant losses due to the cancellation of import duty benefits after January 1, 2017, as the savings on customs payments significantly affect the cost of production.
NCE has already begun work on the assessment of the amount of customs benefits, created work places and the load of the production capacity in relation of 95 participants of SEZ, receiving import customs exemptions, and the prognosis for 2016-2017. Accordingly, it will be possible to determine the “price of the issue”, i.e. what potential benefits can bring the preservation of customs privileges in 2017.
In addition, the Ministry of National Economy informed about the alternative measures of state support that have been developed and recommended by the World Bank by the order of MNE.
By the way, in Russia, which is also a member of the WTO, it is planned to apply such alternative measures from April 2016, when the grace period on the use of import customs privileges will be over.
Thus, the Russian Federation plans to introduce fairly simple support mechanism, which would subsidize losses from the payment of import duties. Methods of calculating budget allocations from the federal budget takes into account the costs of the enterprise for the payment of wages, deductions for social and medical insurance, as well as pension fund of the Russian Federation. About 800 enterprises and organizations of the Kaliningrad region will benefit budgetary support after the abolition of customs exemptions. The draft federal budget for 2016 allocates more than 66 billion rubles for this purpose.
The wording of the name of the support measure is formulated in accordance with the principles of the WTO, as it excludes direct support for export and import substitution - "interbudget transfers to support the residents of the SEZ in the Kaliningrad region".
In this regard, NCE proposed together with MNE to continue this work in the next year to develop alternative measures of state support with the definition of conditions for granting them after January 1, 2017, based on the actual needs of the participants of SEZ.
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