Putin signs Russia into WTO

President Vladimir Putin on Saturday signed the bill ratifying Russia’s entry to the World Trade Organization after 18 years of often acrimonious negotiations, the Kremlin press office said.

Economists have long argued that Russia needed to join the WTO as it was the only major economy outside the body - following China’s membership in 2001 - and the government hopes accession will stimulate growth.

The measure making Russia the 156th WTO member will become law within 30 days, after the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, approved it on July 10 and the upper house, the Federation Council, on Wednesday. But the membership has also been controversial, with some medium-sized firms expressing concern they will be put out of business by being unable to compete against imports made cheaper by a reduction in customs tariffs.


The reduction of the tariffs was a key condition for Russia entering the WTO and they will fall from a current average level of 9.5 percent to 7.4 percent in 2013, 6.9 percent in 2014 and 6.0 percent in 2015.

According to the World Bank, WTO entry will bring a boost worth 3.3 percent of Russian GDP - or $49 billion - in the first three years after joining. Over 10 years, the gain will be worth 11 percent of GDP, it says.

But Senator Sergei Lisovsky warned this week that Russia was wholly unprepared to compete without trade protection against other world economies which were more used to competition and were considerably less corrupt.

Russia’s journey to joining the WTO started back in 1993 but was marked by frequent rows with Western partners, objections by its foes and not least a sometimes lukewarm attitude on the part of the Russian leadership.

Putin also signed into law a controversial bill passed by parliament that brands NGOs who receive funding from abroad as “foreign agents”. The law, which has caused huge concern among activists who fear it will be used to stigmatise critical NGOs, was signed by Putin after it was rushed through the lower and upper houses of parliament before their summer breaks.

Putin “signed the federal law on regulating the activities of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) who carry out the role of a foreign agent”, the Kremlin said in a statement. The law, which sailed through the State Duma lower house on July 13 and then the upper house Federation Council on July 18, requires NGOs who receive foreign funding to register with the authorities as foreign agents.

The NGOs will have to allow official checks of their income, accounting and management structure as well as regularly make public their sources of income and their management.

The label “foreign agent” does not directly implicate the NGO in espionage but does carry in Russian unequivocally negative connotations of unpatriotic behaviour.

“Materials published by the NGO in the media and on the Internet should be accompanied by a note that these materials have been published or distributed by an NGO carrying out the role of a foreign agent,” the new legislation says.

The law broadly applies to any foreign-funded NGO engaged in a political activity in Russia but exempts religious groups and organisations linked to the state or state companies.

Activists have warned that the law is a throwback to the public shaming of dissidents in the Soviet Union and could herald a new period of repression in Putin’s Russia.

The leader of the Moscow Helsinki Group, one of the Russia’s oldest human right organisations, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, has decided to turn down foreign grants to avoid having to register the body as a “foreign agent.”