Bosnia's Sarovic: Kosovo to lift remaining trade barriers

 Last week, the Economy Ministry of Kosovo decided to introduce tariffs on imports from CEFTA countries, prompting a meeting of regional ministers in Belgrade on Wednesday.

The Foreign Trade Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina requested an urgent response from Bosnia’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations after they received the information that Kosovo’s Ministry of Economy issued a decision to introduce protective measures on imports of milk and dairy products from Bosnia and to introduce protective measures for fruit and vegetable imports from all regional countries.

"The CEFTA is a free-trade zone for regional countries, and with the EU's free-trade zone, it represents one of the most important markets for us, but it is particularly important for us because these are our key regional partners," Sarovic said commenting on the meeting attended also by ministers from Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia.

Since Kosovo is a member state of the CEFTA (Central European Free Trade Agreement), today's meeting participants decided that each CEFTA member state would introduce reciprocal measure against Kosovo if it did not abolish all protective measures introduced last week.

Serbia's Trade Minister Rasim Ljajic confirmed Pristina removed some barriers to the import of a number of agriculture products that had been recently introduced. 

"We expect all of the protective measures to be announced soon," Ljajuc said, following the meeting in Belgrade.

He said that "no one wants a trade war which is not beneficial to anyone," but he reiterated that if Pristina did not lift the barriers, each CEFTA member state would decide on reciprocal measures.

"We are only partially satisfied because Kosovo abolished only some of the measures before the meeting, but not all, so some remained in force. We called on Kosovo to abolish them as well in the next few days, and we expect they will return to the basic CEFTA principles," Sarovic said.

However, he said the talks were successful.

"The talks were successful; the results are encouraging considering there are no additional tariffs. We expect Kosovo to abolish the remaining ones as well," Sarovic said.