Russian Import Quotas May Delay U.S. Meat and Poultry Exports for 2005 - WASHINGTON, DC – Due to the delay of implementing regulations for the 2005 poultry quota and beef and pork tariff rate quotas (TRQ) by the Russian Federation, full shipments of U.S. meat and poultry may not arrive in Russia until mid-February.

Currently, the Russian Federation restricts market access for meat products using separate TRQs for chilled beef, frozen beef, pork and a quota for poultry. For the United States to begin exporting these products, the Russian Government must issue two legislative measures for each commodity: an implementing resolution and importer list. Implementing resolutions state the absolute volume of the quota and TRQs and the over quota tariff applied to beef and pork imported outside of the TRQ.

A 2003 trade agreement established TRQ mechanisms that allowed the United States to export a specific quantity of a given commodity at a relatively low tariff; any quantity exported above this allocation would be subject to a higher tariff.

The U.S. Embassy believes that Russian importers will not be able to start contracting U.S. product until mid-January. A similar situation took place last year during the quota authorization and trade could not officially begin until the final importer list was published and made effective in the first week of February.

According to Russian press reports, the meat and poultry quotas were announced on December 31. Further, quotas will be reportedly higher than last year:

• Pork - 467,400 metric tons (mt), up from 450,000 mt
• Frozen beef - 430,000 mt, up from 420,000 mt
• Chilled beef - 25,700 mt
• Poultry - 1,090,000 mt, up from 1,050,000.

Russia is the largest export market for U.S. poultry and the 5th and 7th largest markets for U.S. pork and beef, respectively.

Source: American Meat Institute (AMI) - 13th January 2005