OREANDA-NEWS. Belarus lost a third of export duties on oil products in 2019 due to a ‘tax maneuver’ of Russia and ‘dirty oil’ delivered from the Druzhba pipeline in spring.

The President of the republic, Alexander Lukashenko, was informed about it by the head of the State Customs Committee, Yury Senko. According to the latter, during last year state budget received more than 9 billion Belarusian roubles (about 423 million US dollars), which is 400 million less than in 2018.

“One of the reasons for this decline is a decrease in oil production and customs duties for the export of petroleum products (by 33.2 %),” Senko said. He added that the loss of export duties on petroleum products “was partially compensated by the introduction of a new procedure for the import of cars by individuals.” Senko also noted that, despite the decrease in oil budget revenues, in general in 2019 customs payments reached the forecast indicator prescribed by the Ministry of Finance.