Russia and Belarus have concluded their negotiations on the transit of Russian oil through the republic’s territory. The final decision should be made by Belarus in accordance with its competence and within the established time frame, Anatoly Golomolzin, deputy head of Russia’s Federal Anti-monopoly Service (FAS), told the TASS news agency.

“The negotiations have been concluded. The disagreements have been noted. The final decision should be made by the Belarusian party in accordance with its competence and within the established time frame,” he said.

As of February 1, Belarus will be raising the tariff on the transit of Russian oil by more than 6%, because Minsk and Moscow have been unable to reach an agreement on the cost of transit, said Belarusian Minister of Anti-monopoly Regulation and Trade Vladimir Koltovich.

Russia’s FAS explained that if Russia and Belarus cannot reach an agreement, then the tariff will go up in February according to the formula: predicted average annual inflation in Russia plus 3%.

In 2020, Belarus was planning to raise the tariff on the transit of Russian oil by 16.6%, a figure which includes the profit lost in connection with last year’s contaminated Russian oil incident. Russia did not approve of such a steep tariff hike.

Belarus already hiked the transit tariff by 3.7% on September 1, 2019.

  Russia, Belarus

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