Finnish-Russian trade plummets, Norwegian-Russian booms
While Finnish-Russian trade over the first nine months of 2008 dropped with 21 percent, Norway in the same period increased its trade turnover with Russia with as much as 76 percent.
Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen was yesterday received in Moscow by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who quickly proclaimed Russia as Finland’s biggest trade partner the first half of 2008.
However, Finnish-Russian trade relations are far from rosy. While cross-border trade has increased strongly over the last years, the trade turnover now sees a significant decrease.
According to figures from the Northwest Russian Customs, Finnish-Russian trade dropped with 21 percent over the first nine months of the year compared with the same period in 2007.
The decrease comes in the wake of Russia’s higher export tariffs on round timber, a raw material used extensively in the Finnish paper and pulp industry. As Russia manifold increases the tariffs, trade between the two countries drops dramatically.
Finnish-Russian trade in the period amounted to 4.83 billion USD, down from 6.1 billion USD the same period in 2007.
Timber is the biggest trade article between the two countries. In addition, Russia and Finland trade oil and gas, electricity, metals, machinery products, diary products and paper.
Meanwhile, Russian trade with Norway experiences the opposite trend. According to the figures, trade turnover between the countries over the first nine months of the year increased with 76 percent. The trade had a value of 1.28 billion USD, up from 731 million USD in the same period in 2007.
Of the trade 700.1 million USD was Russian exports (up 129 percent), while Norwegian exports amounted to 586.4 million USD (up 38 percent). While Norway imported primarily mineral products, aluminium and ferrous metals, the country exported mostly fish and fish products.
As Russian economy has opened and developed, trade with Western neighbours have been undergoing a major positive change. Between 2000 and 2007, the goods trade between the 27 EU members and Russia nearly tripled in value. This rapid growth continued in the first six months of 2008, with the value of EU27 exports to Russia rising to 50 billion EUR from 40 billion in the first half of 2007, and imports rising to 88 billion from 69 billion, figures from Eurostat shows.
Among the EU27 member states, Germany (16 billion EUR, 31% of EU exports) was by far the largest exporter to Russia in the first six months of 2008, followed by Italy (5 bn or 10%) and Finland (4 bn, 7%). Germany (16 bn or 19%) was also the largest importer, followed by the Netherlands2 (11 bn or 12%) and Italy (8 bn or 9%).