«We might be very good friends, but our tobacco is of different brands. Apparently, the sickly EAEU is living its last days. Well, good riddance to it. Maybe some EAEU-lite will come to replace it,» an economist Almas Chukin wrote on his Facebook page.

He recalled that when the USSR countries «broke up» in 1991, they decided to preserve many important ties — communication between people, trade, transport links and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States instead of the Soviet Union. Then this union, essentially the CIS, remained a kind of common declaration.

«Then Moscow undertook to mold the core of a new super-CIS out of those who were more compliant, and the Customs Union was formed, which later grew into EAEU of five countries. This EAEU has three inborn diseases: mechanism of decision-making, splitting of revenues from customs duties collection, and the dominance of Russia. As for decisions: the principle of consensus works, and it is the most inefficient way of decision-making. There is a saying that the speed of the caravan is determined by the slowest camel, and it’s even worse with consensus. Any «camel» can disagree, and the decision is not made and postponed until the next meeting of the leaders of the countries. The life does not wait, and no decision is made. What is this collective farm for?» asks the economist.

He believes that the most serious problem today is the receipt of income from customs. The norms of customs duty splitting were agreed on in 2015 and «corrected» in 2019. Armenia receives 1.22 percent, Belarus — 4.86 percent, Kazakhstan — 6.955 percent, Kyrgyzstan — 1.9 percent, Russia — 86.065 percent.

«Since we have created a supposedly common customs territory, any point on the border is an entry into the common territory. For example, a businessman from Kazakhstan bought goods in Poland and entered the EAEU territory in Brest. Belarusian customs officers receive him, draw up uniform duties for him, and he is free to go to the Republic of Kazakhstan. But the money goes into the «common pool», and Kazakhstan will receive only 6.955 percent of this amount, while Russia, Armenia and the rest their shares. Why it is so? Because in another case, an Armenian company bought equipment in China, and we took it from Khorgos, took the money and again «split it up» for all five EAEU members,» Almas Chukin commented.

The economist considers this revenue sharing as a strange and exotic system, incomprehensibly calculated. Dozens of experts give their opinions based on GDP, the volume of foreign trade for the past periods and a bunch of different things. But by and large, all these calculations are nonsense and fortune-telling based on a mass of unrelated data.

«Economies differ in structure (some have more exports and others may have more imports), GDP is counted differently and accounted for differently, including or not noticing a large share of the gray market. But that was yesterday. Today, in general, the «chessboard» is upside down and the «pieces» are scattered. Just imagine, for example, there are $100 billion worth of goods imported across the borders of Kazakhstan and $10 billion of customs duties collected. We will have to keep $695 million and send $8.5 billion to the Russian treasury (Russian share is 85 percent). Maybe it used to be like this, most of the goods were transiting through us to the Russian Federation. But now, in the sanctions reality, everything has changed. Let’s assume that transit to Russia has sharply decreased, and we continue and increase imports to Kazakhstan, but will we still send 85 percent to the Russian budget? And another 5 percent to Belarus?» the economist writes.

He also recalled that recently, due to insurmountable problems Russia and Belarus decided to receive customs duties on their territory in rubles, while other countries — still in dollars. Two currencies, so there are questions about the exchange rate, which Russia and Belarus are going to take according to their market rates. There could be exchange rate differences along the way.

«Administratively, it’s a nightmare if a supplier is carrying consolidated shipments, with different destinations. In general, we meant the best, but it turned out as usual. But we have no right to continue this absurd system now. We should temporarily return the national customs services to the borders within the EAEU (border guards are already tired of studying to become customs officers) and keep separate accounting. It is possible to keep zero rates and trade without restrictions, but taking into account the turnover of foreign trade, a new order should be established for duties and taxes. The union of five economies, where two of the GDPs, representing 90 percent of the total, are under unprecedented sanctions is ABSURD,» Almas Chukin concluded.