On December 28th, the Ukrainian delegation arrived in Belarus to discuss trade issues connected with the entry into force of the Free Trade Area agreement with the European Union on January 1st, 2016.
The negotiations showed that Belarus is not planning to cancel the free trade area agreement with Ukraine, as Natalia Mykolska, the deputy minister of economic development and trade of Ukraine, wrote on her Twitter.
“All the urgent trade issues were discussed at the meeting. The main thing is that the Republic of Belarus will not come out of the FTA with Ukraine,” she wrote.
It is worth to mentioning that on December 16th, 2015, Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the termination of the agreement on free trade zone with Ukraine from January 1st, 2016. The State Duma of the Russian Federation suspended the free trade agreement with Ukraine on December 22nd, and then, on December 25th, the Federation Council approved a law to suspend the agreement on the FTA with Ukraine.
The Ministry of Finance of Russian Federation stated that the Russia business losses from the FTA between Ukraine and the European Union in the short term could amount about $ 3.5 billion.
