Belarusian commodity exchange to become auction platform for EurAsEC

The Belarusian Universal Commodity Exchange (BUCE) will become a platform for auctions of the EurAsEC member states. The decision was taken at a session of a working group of representatives of the EurAsEC member states in Minsk, BelTA learnt from Nikolai Popeka, assistant to the chairman of the BUCE board of directors.

A decision was taken to design a single system of product promotion inside the EurAsEC through the Belarusian exchange. Considering the overproduction of foodstuffs especially dairy products in Belarus, promotion of export through this system is very beneficial for the country. The EurAsEC intends to promote goods not only inside the community but to third countries as well.

A protocol of cooperation has been signed; experimental online bids will be held shortly. Unimilk, Russia’s largest company uniting more than 30 companies, two of them are in Ukraine, has already announced its participation in the bids at BUCE. Ukraine has also proposed selling its products at auctions though the country is not an EurAsEC member, Nikolai Popeka said.

Actions for these coutrnies will be organised in 2009, and for all EurAsEC member states in 2010. “First we negotiated only the foodstuffs auctions, but the working group showed interest in the sales of metals, wood and other products,” Nikolai Popeka stated.

The session of EurAsEC countries was held at the Institute of System Analysis. Its participants proposed to call the BUCE not the Belarusian, but Eurasian platform to promote products. The new status is expected to be formalized at a foodstuffs conference in Moscow.

Nikolai Popeka informed that the BUCE has already carried out cotton auctions. “Every year about 12,000 tonnes of cotton are imported in Belarus, and nobody knows how this cotton reaches Belarusian enterprises and who sets the prices. Here we offer an absolutely transparent system of tenders,” he said. The aim of this system is to reduce the number of middlemen, and consequently the costs and the end value of products.

The Belarusian Universal Commodity Exchange was registered in May 2004. It was established with a view to improving the mechanism of government regulation in the field of domestic and foreign trade; developing formal wholesale market; providing equal access to the market and giving additional economic impetus to the agents of the market. The first bids were held in early June 2005. Timber, Metal and Agricultural Production Departments operate at the Exchange.