Trade between Moscow and EU up 2% in Q1 2021

In the period from January to March 2021, total trade between Moscow and EU member states rose 2 percent to $27.46 billion. According to Vladimir Yefimov, Moscow’s deputy mayor for economic policy and property and land relations, the capital city accounts for half of the volume of trade between Russian and the European Union.

“Of that total, non-resource and non-energy exports accounted for $1.6 billion, an increase of 46.2 percent y/y and 79.2 percent from the first quarter of 2019. Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Finland, and Sweden were key consumers of Moscow’s exports,” Yefimov said.

According to Yefimov, this upturn in exports outside of natural resources and energy is critical for Moscow as the city’s eyes targets set by a national program entitled International Cooperation and Exports. Under the program, Moscow and other Russian regions are tasked with increasing their non-resource and non-energy exports by 70 percent between 2020 and 2030.

“Moscow’s exporters have high-tech products to offer Europe. Components for the electronics and automobile industries – things like integrated circuits, EMV cards, and similar products – are good examples,” Alexander Prokhorov, head of Moscow’s department for investment and industrial policy, said.

Prokhorov added that he sees potential for the capital’s exporters in the comparatively new niche of organic cosmetics. Since Moscow-based companies already export cosmetics to Europe, organics are worth studying.

Natalia Shuvalova, director of the Mosprom Center, a non-profit group providing support to the capital’s industrial exporters, sees Moscow’s non-resource and non-energy exports growing more steadily than mineral-resource dominated total exports. She believes this puts non-resource and non-energy exports in a good position to drive expanded trade cooperation between partners in Moscow and Europe.

Mosprom Center forecasts that Germany, Poland, Austria, and Slovenia will be the most promising export markets in the near future because, according to the experts, these countries have posted the greatest increases in imports over the past three years.

(WBJ)