The Kyrgyz government is negotiating with Russia a reduction in the price of natural gas, the government press office reports.
“The global economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic has had a significant impact on our economy, lowered the local currency, suspended most economic activity and reduced the purchasing power of the population,” said Kyrgyz Deputy Prime Minister Erkin Asrandiyev.
“Therefore, we are now actively negotiating with Russia to a reduction of the selling price of natural gas and switching to local currency settlements. For us, this issue is very sensitive,” said Deputy Prime Minister.
Erkin Asrandiyev reminded that natural gas prices are regulated under a bilateral agreement with Russia. And by 2025, it is planned to form a common gas market of the EAEC. A document on strategic directions of the EAEC until 2025 is being finalized, within the framework of which the issue of gas transportation tariff is also being considered.
At the EAEC summit held on May 19th in the format of a videoconference, the head of Belarus Alyaksandr Lukashenka said that the issue of pricing for gas transportation services in the common market of the EAEC remained unresolved, while the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that the document on the strategic directions of economic integration should fix the principle of using common approaches to pricing and tariff formation in the common gas market of the EAEC.
Vladimir Putin, in his turn, stressed that in order to use the unified formula of gas tariffs, there needs to be a level of EAEC integration which has not been reached yet.
