Europe

Home page

Europe

Estonia gov't strains over Russian food contra-sanction

08 August 2014 02:38 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The Estonian government said Thursday that the impact of the Russian food contra-sanctions towards Estonia is "not yet known", calling on its farmers and exporters to draft corresponding plan to prevent negative consequences, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas held a cabinet meeting on Thursday to discuss the situation and measures to take after Russian's contra-sanction of restriction on the import of agricultural products from European Union (EU) countries.

Roivas told a press conference after the meeting that the overall impact of sanctions on the Estonian agriculture may not be significant.

"But at the same time, it makes no sense to build the illusion that this will not affect the specific enterprise," said Roivas.

The impact of sanctions on the Russian food industry in Estonia, he said, "is difficult to say", specifying that very important share is exports of milk, which stands at 24 percent.

"It is, however, considerably less than the exports to the EU. Meat exports to Russia is 5.5 percent, in export vegetables to Russia a little more than 1 percent," said Roivas.

"The imposition of restrictions means that the choice for the Russian shelves strongly decrease, prices will rise. Local manufacturers fail to meet the demand, and a long time will not be able to cover it. The worst affected people are in Russia," said Roivas.

Estonian Agriculture Minister Ivari Padar expressed on the same occasion his believe that Estonian farmers will survive the sanctions, "just need to look for new markets".

The new markets are mainly in EU countries, as well as more locations such as the Chinese market, he added.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday that Russia is imposing a ban on food imports from the EU and the United States.

The measures were taken in retaliation for the Western sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine crisis.

The Russian government imposed a one-year ban on imports of beef, pork, poultry, fish, cheeses, fruit, vegetables and dairy products from Australia, Canada, the EU, the United States and Norway, the Itar-Tass news agency quoted Medvedev as saying.