MOSCOW, July 21. /TASS/. Russia will not join the new WTO agreement on reduction of duties on IT products, representative of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development Maxim Medvedkov told Vedomosti Newspaper on Tuesday.
The refusal to sign the revised Information Technology Agreement [ITA] is conditioned by the desire to protect domestic producers, Medvedkov said. The agreement pertains to numerous products manufactured in Russia, including new kinds of semiconductors and play stations, along with GPS devices and certain types of telecom and medical equipment, the expert added. Russia’s import duty on such products may be above 10% at present.
Russia is not a major exporter of products covered by ITA but is trying to establish local production of some of them, Medvedkov said. He did not rule out Russia may join it later, when Russian manufacturers will be more interested in the integration of domestic and global IT markets.