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This conclusion was reached by the attendees of the Eurasian Business Forum "Integration", held on November 15 at the President Hotel in Moscow. The plenary session of the Forum was dedicated to the Greater Eurasian Partnership and the strategy of advanced development.

Sergei Glazyev, Minister in charge of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasian Economic Commission, the moderator of the plenary session, has informed that at present the Commission jointly with the Eurasian Economic Union countries is actively engaged on the draft Declaration on further development of economic processes within the EAEU until 2030 and for the period until 2045. A report on the EAEU functioning, which covers the entire period of the association's existence, is being prepared as well. Both documents are scheduled to be presented to the Heads of State in December.

"Our calculations show that the integration effect is quite large, especially for the States that are closely integrated with partners. We see the greatest contribution of integration to GDP growth in Belarus, while Kyrgyzstan and Armenia have significant indicators as well. Kazakhstan and Russia have relatively lower effects, but they are no less in absolute terms. In other words, the Eurasian economic integration gives a fairly high increase in economic activity, and the growth opportunities are enormous," Sergei Glazyev stated.  

He also paid attention to the fact that capacity utilization in the EAEU countries is just over 60%, which opens possibilities for increasing the output. Besides, according to his estimates, the EAEU has a huge potential for import substitution. 

In turn, Dmitry Volvach, Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, stated that since the EAEU establishment, mutual trade has almost doubled, and mutual trade with external partners has grown by 60%. In the first 8 months of this year, the volume of mutual trade in the EAEU increased by almost 9% compared to the same period last year and amounted to about 4.5 trl rubles.

"In 2023, we managed to enter the trajectory of stable growth of the aggregate EAEU GDP - 3% in the first nine months of this year. And this is despite the fact that two participants of the Union are under sanctions pressure, and yet our aggregate GDP has grown by 3%," Dmitry Volvach said.

Arzybek Kozhoshev, EEC Minister in charge of Energy and Infrastructure, has focused on the EAEU integration agenda in energy and transport, noting that the Union's common markets for energy resources are planned to be launched on January 1, 2025. 

Viktor Nazarenko, EEC Minister in charge of Technical Regulation, has stated that creating the EAEU unified system of technical regulation entered the final stage, when a return to regulation at the national level is no longer possible. But further movement is hindered by tendencies towards preserving tools for influence at the state level to the detriment of integration possibilities.

Liu Qinghua, Minister Counsellor of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the Russian Federation, shared her views on the work on coupling the Eurasian Economic Union and the Chinese Belt and Road initiative. "The coupling and cooperation is in line with historical development and reflects the interests of the countries," she emphasized. 

Alexander Murychev, Vice President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE), has stated that the program for financing industrial cooperation adopted in the EAEU is an important innovation for the business community, and expressed hope that a large number of small and medium-sized businesses will be able to participate in the program. 

Alexey Grom, Director General of United Transport and Logistics Company JSC - Eurasian Railway Alliance (UTLC ERA JSC), reported on the trends in freight traffic development, and Elena Yagodkina, Deputy Head of the Federal Customs Service of Russia, touched upon the issues of simplifying and accelerating transit traffic. 

Other speakers at the plenary session included Anton Shalaev, Head of Rosstandart, who raised the issue of no coordinated policy in the field of ensuring uniformity of measurements, Oleg Kondratenko, Director of LVO LLC (Republic of Belarus), and Tatiana Grigorieva, Director General of the National Rating Agency, who spoke on the integration of sustainable development agendas at the regional level of the EAEU countries.