On August 10, Minsk / Olga Belyavskaya - BELTA /. Belarus plans to reduce the share of imported beer in the domestic market to 5% by 2015, reported today at a meeting of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, Chairman of the Belgospishcheprom concern Ivan Danchenko, BELTA correspondent reports. The head of Belgospishcheprom explained that the main tasks of the program for the development of the brewing industry of Belarus for the next five-year period are the development of created capacities in the industry, increasing exports, and reducing imports to 5% of the domestic market volume from the current 30%. As one of the measures that will help reduce beer imports, Ivan Danchenko proposed licensing beer from Ukraine. He recalled that the Belarusian side conducted an anti-dumping investigation into Ukrainian beer. "The Ukrainian side admitted that it was dumping so that an anti-dumping duty of about 11% would not be introduced," he explained. "Some Ukrainian brewing companies have undertaken price restrictions on beer supplies to Belarus." According to Ivan Danchenko, all this gives Belarus grounds to introduce licensing of beer imports from Ukraine. The corresponding regulatory document has already been prepared. At the same time, the head of Belgospishcheprom recalled that a beer import licensing mechanism is already in place in Kazakhstan. "We ask for support for our proposals in this area," he said. Ivan Danchenko also proposed, to balance the import and export of beer from Russia, to include the commodity item of beer in the balance of the Union State. "Within the framework of the Union State, Russia and we constantly make forecast balances for sugar, meat, eggs, and milk. There is a proposal to introduce similar measures for beer. This would allow us to regulate beer imports from Russia," noted the head of Belgospishcheprom. In addition, for import substitution of beer, domestic producers plan to additionally master the production of new names of this product in the near future. Thus, OJSC Brestskoye Pivo plans to produce Obolon Svetloye, OJSC Krynitsa – Ottinger, and Heineken company – Zlaty Bazant Chernoe. -0-

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