Tigran Sargsyan: Kyrgyzstan’s criticism of EEC is partly fair

"There is criticism of the Eurasian Economic Commission in Kyrgyzstan. And it is partly fair," EEC Chairman Tigran Sargsyan stated at the Eurasian Week Forum today.
According to him, the commission should create facilitated conditions for business to operate in a common space. At the same time, the head of the EEC noted that, in general, Kyrgyzstan had rather high expectations from joining the Eurasian Economic Union.
"There was an impression that all economic and social problems should be resolved after accession of Kyrgyzstan to EEU. Barriers, bureaucratic obstacles had to be removed. We need to work together to weaken them as much as possible. On the other hand, high expectations are associated with the fact that the business was not ready to work in common markets," Tigran Sargsyan believes.
"The common market is a competition. We create conditions not only for Kyrgyz producers, but also for manufacturers of all five countries. Kyrgyz manufacturers should have known that they might not be ready on some product groups. Therefore, upon joining the union, we allowed to have exemptions for certain groups of goods, that is, to use the old tariffs that were necessary in order the Kyrgyz government to prepare the business for the new conditions. When time came to switch to the general tariff, there was a situation like that of students the day before an exam. They began to say that they were not ready for the new rules. But there were 2-3 years to prepare. The business should cooperate and do more than they did yesterday, and do more new things today than yesterday," he said.