OREANDA-NEWS. Belarus may join the World Trade Organization (WTO) by 2015, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Guryanov told reporters.

The deputy minister described accession to the WTO as a complicated procedure with a lot of red tape. “It appears that Kazakhstan will get things done by the end of the year. If we speed up a bit, Belarus may be able to join the WTO by 2015,” Guryanov said.

Belarus has been negotiating accession to the WTO since the 1990s. After Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan established the Customs Union in 2009, the parties decided they should join the WTO as a single territory and suspended individual negotiation processes. However, on second thought, they announced a plan to accede to the WTO independently. Russia joined the WTO in August 2012.