By Vestnik Kavkaza
In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin met Nursultan Nazarbayev and Alexander Lukashenko and suggested discussing the formation of a monetary union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan in the future. Putin has already ordered the Central Bank and the government to define further directions of integration into the monetary and financial spheres within the framework of the EaEU and develop opportunities for the formation of the monetary union of the three countries.
Meanwhile, according to experts, it is too early to speak about launching a united currency in the EaEU. First it is necessary to coordinate the macroeconomic parameters, fiscal policy and the labor market.
Aza Mihranyan, a leading researcher at the Center for Post-Soviet Studies of the Institute of Economics, says that the transitional period of mutual harmonization of technologies to meet the requirements of new technical regulations is in an active stage. “All of these technologies are the most successfully implemented, the introduction and usage of it precisely in Kazakhstan. Today about 70% of total trade in general and cooperative ties falls exactly on the border areas. Indeed, the longest border, direct manufacturing is implemented at its best in the border areas, and industrial cooperation, which is extremely important, not only trade relations. And this is the very basis of real integration, when we can expect these effects of mutual synergy.”
According to Migranyan, “today we have a progressive movement for the formation of uniform industry markets. We are talking about a single trade market in agricultural products. Today legal standards are seriously advanced and their harmonization and unification of the market in general medicine and pharmacology. We are talking about unification of the antitrust settlement, which has made very serious progress. The electricity market will be unified. In this direction negotiations and the process of forming a single space is also occurring. All this is still happening at the level of legal acts, legislative frameworks. That is what is creating the logical conditions for real economic convergence. Naturally, the next stage, as expected, 2016 will be a real economic filling of these processes.”
The expert admits that we cannot say that at one time there will be any conditions, when residents of the EaEU countries will feel all the charm of a single space. This space should be created in stages, gradually, step by step, sector by sector. “The economic situation, external shocks, sanctions restrictions, exchange rates and so on, today it all has some pressure on the rates of these processes. But the sheer quality of the formation of the Eurasian space today is in no way inferior, or rolled back, as it is stated in some media. Therefore, the process is in the normal operating mode,” she thinks.
