Eurasian Economic Union Increased Trade With US Despite Sanctions - Official

Mohammad Ali (@ChaudhryMAli88) Published March 20, 2019 | 07:05 AM

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 20th March, 2019) Trade cooperation between the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the United States has been on the rise despite US sanctions on Moscow, an official from the bloc's regulatory commission, Fedor Chernitsyn, told reporters at a business conference.

Chernitsyn, the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) Assistant Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics, made the remarks at the fifth annual summit on doing business with the EAEU held at the Russian Cultural Center in Washington, DC, which was attended by numerous executives from the United States and around the world.

"Despite the sanctions rhetoric, our trade and economic cooperation with the United States have even increased," Chernitsyn said on Tuesday. "Since the launch of the Eurasian integration processes in 2015 and until today, the volume of trade between the EAEU and the United States has increased by about 20 percent, although the United States is only 4 percent of the whole trade volume of the EAEU."

The trade volume between the EAEU and the United States accounted for $28.

3 billion in 2018 compared to $23.6 billion in 2015.

"There is an interest of American companies, but the political disagreements with one of the members of our Eurasian Union shadow it - the Russian Federation and the American government," he said. "Unfortunately, the cold political climate overshadows the brilliant prospects of our economic cooperation. But we believe that sometime this will change."

The EEC is a permanent regulatory body of the EAEU. The EAEU is an economic bloc comprising of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. It aims to encourage regional economic integration through the free movement of goods, services, and people within the union.

The United States and the European Union since 2014 have imposed several rounds of sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine conflict including measures targeting Russia's energy, banking, and defense sectors. Moscow has repeatedly denied allegations of interfering in Ukraine affairs.