Excise duties alone make Belarus lose $50 million annually

Suspended Russian fuel supplies to Belarus over the "solvent" schemes meant losses for the Belarusian budget linked to motor fuel excise duties. This is evidenced by the data of economic observer Dzmitry Ivanovich about the budget of Belarus which he received from a member of the House of Representatives Hanna Kanapatskaya.

In 2017, revenues from excise duties on imported motor fuel from Russia amounted to 169.3 million BYN. There are no publicly available data for 2018, however, as Dzmitry Ivanovich told Euroradio, last year the budget received 93.4 million BYN from fuel excise duties (according to estimates).

In the first half of 2018, Belarus imported about 300-400 thousand tons of oil products from Russia every month, while in October it was already 115.5 thousand tons, and in November it became 24.3 thousand tons.

In December 2018, deliveries of Russian gasoline, diesel fuel and fuel oil to Belarus stopped completely. Russia imposed restrictions due to the financial losses over to the possible re-export of petroleum products from the territory of Belarus.

As a result, the draft budget for 2019 does not provide for revenues from excise duties on Russian fuel at all. This means that Belarus will lose almost $50 million in fuel excise duties in comparison with 2018 alone. In the following years, if Russia does not lift the restrictions, there will be no revenues from excise duties, either.

Earlier, Belarus imported fuel from Russia and sold it domestically, while oil products made at its refineries were sold for export and brought revenues from the export duty to its budget. Since the end of 2019, according to the protocol signed on October 10, 2018 on amendments to the agreement on measures to regulate trade and economic cooperation in the field of oil and oil products exports, Belarus can only import from Russia the oil products that are not produced in the country.