The WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement: Modern Challenges for Russia

The implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement introduces a significant impact on enhancing trade flows between countries. Five years have passed since Russia ratified this Agreement. The goal of this study is to assess the implementation process of trade facilitation in the Russian Federation and to identify the main challenges and prospects in this area of the Russian foreign trade policy today. The paper firstly discusses various research approaches on the role of trade facilitation measures in the economic development of countries. The authors then conduct a qualitative analysis of the data on the implementation of measures in Russia and provide quantitative estimates for some categories of trade facilitation measures.The literature review demonstrates that trade facilitation leads to lower transaction and trade costs, but it is also associated with certain costs of changing the regulatory framework and infrastructure. In the implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement from the perspectives of many categories, Russia has today achieved impressive results in comparison with the world practice. However, firstly, the Russian Federation should pay attention not only to the mandatory measures of the Agreement, but also to those measures, which are advisory and are not included in the Agreement. Those measures substantially contribute to the trade under the modern conditions of trade cooperation and digitalization of economies. Secondly, the authors present recommendations for the development of trade facilitation measures, which today require a special approach and the implementation of which will significantly simplify export-import operations. Finally, Russia needs to conduct continuous comprehensive monitoring of all applied trade facilitation measures in order to achieve their greater effectiveness.