Armenia and Russia sign a statement to combat illicit turnover of industrial products and promote integration cooperation

ArmInfo. During the plenary  meeting of VI International Forum "Anti-Counterfeiting-2016", Russian  Minister of Trade and Industry Denis Manturov and Armenian Minister  of Economic Development and Investments Suren Karayan signed a  statement to combat illicit turnover of industrial products and to  promote integration cooperation.  

The Russian minister said that the next step allowing Armenia to take  more effective measures to that end will be to establish a State  Commission to Combat Counterfeiting, which will coordinate the  activities of the structures interested in regulation of supervisory  law-enforcement agencies to combat illicit trade. Such bodies are  already operating in Russia, Kazakhstan and will soon be launched in  Belarus. "In Russia, this task is assigned to the State Commission to  Combat Counterfeiting, which has been set up by a presidential  decree. It exercises its power not only at the general federal level,  but also has offices in each region of the Russian Federation. Over a  year of activities, the Commission has prepared a number of  legislative initiatives particularly for the aircraft industry, light  industry, e-commerce, etc," he said.

Manturov noted that according to experts the counterfeit products in  various sectors of Russian economy currently range from 5% to 30%. "I  am sure that in our partner countries this figure is not smaller," he  said, adding that the problem directly affects the economies of the  Eurasian Economic Union member states. 

He stressed the need to build a single system of resistance and each  state should assume the role of a guarantor of protection of the  common market. The further actions, he noted, are already reflected  in the draft strategy to be adopted before the end of the year.  "First of all, to effectively fight illicit turnover, the strategy  envisages creation of a joint system for collecting and exchanging  information, application of common technical regulations, development  of common standards of responsibility for the failure to meet the  regulations. At the same time, a big job will be done in 2017 in  marking of light industrial products such as pharmaceuticals, fine  wood, aircraft components, etc.," Manturov said.

Manturov pointed out that the edited Customs Code of the EEU will be  submitted for consideration by the end of 2016. "Integration  processes are developing and we need to work out all of the key  mechanisms of cooperation, including mechanisms on combating  counterfeiting," he said. 

To note, VI International Forum "Anti-Counterfeiting-2016" is being  held in Yerevan on November 22-23