Report: Russia’s meat imports plummet 58% over 4 years

MOSCOW, Jan 29 (PRIME) -- Russia’s imports of meat and meat products plummeted by almost 58% to 800,000 tonnes over the past four years since introduction of sanctions and countersanctions, Sergei Dankvert, director of the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Oversight, said in an interview to Rossiya 1 channel released late on Monday.

“We have interesting figures to share. Let’s take the year of 2014. We imported almost 1.9 million tonnes of all types of meat and meat products then. Now let’s have a look at the past year, and we see only 800,000 tonnes. We’ve replaced almost 1 million tonnes over the four years,” he said.

“If we look at milk and dairy products, we had 1.164 million tonnes (imported in 2014), and now we have only 790,000 tonnes,” he said.

He added that imports from Belarus amount to about 350,000 tonnes, and imports of dairy products and milk from all other countries amounts to about 450,000 tonnes.

The reduction of imports happened simultaneously with an increase in domestic production, he added.

End