The countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) should create a single gas market in the next two years, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters on Friday.
"In the near future, in the next couple of years, we should implement our agreements, which were formulated earlier, namely - to achieve the creation of a single gas market [in the EEU], within the next two years to form the principles of its work and go already to the practical implementation of the common electricity market, this is also extremely important," said the Russian president at a press conference following a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council held in Bishkek.
He noted that it is a difficult work, and there are "a lot of issues related to the harmonization of positions." At the same time, Putin pointed out that at the summit there was "a very good discussion on this topic and many things became clear." "It is not only a question of Russia's position: to keep prices or raise them, or not to give something to someone. No, the question of prices is primarily a question of alignment of economic policy," he explained.
"We have different levels of subsidization of domestic prices, different reasons cause this situation: socio-economic, even political, historical. Some countries have it so that commodity prices for domestic consumption are heavily subsidized, but the subsidies can't be canceled from today to tomorrow for a variety of reasons, it takes time. And in another country, there are fewer subsidies and the pricing is more market-based," Putin gave examples.
In this regard, he drew attention to the situation in Russia. " Where should the cheapest gas be? The one, which is closer to the place of production, there is no extra transportation there. It should be the cheapest in the Yamalo-Nenets [autonomous] region. But the country is huge, we can't make gas in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous region cheap, while somewhere in the Far East or on the western border it's extremely expensive. That is why, in fact, we subsidize this transport component for the end consumer," explained the president.
He stressed that in order to talk about a single gas market of the EEU, common principles of subsidies should be worked out. "Everyone understands that. It takes time, it requires joint work in the field of taxation, in the harmonization of rules and in the introduction of tax codes <...>. There is no contradiction or misunderstanding of how we should achieve these results. We just need to work hard, within the next two years, I think we will achieve the result on many of these positions", summed up Putin.
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Based on materials from TASS