The U.S. Treasury General License now allows payments related to the purchase of food, fertilizers, drugs, and medical equipment in Russia, reported on the department’s website.
The US also lifted restrictions on seed trading operations and lifted sanctions on Gazprom’s former subsidiary, Gazprom Germania GMBH, and Kazakhstan’s subsidiary Alfa Bank.
The above goods were withdrawn from US sanctions on February 24. Sanctions are no longer imposed on inorganic fertilizers, seeds and reproductive materials, foodstuffs, vitamins and minerals, food additives and vitamins, bottled water, livestock and feed.
In addition, restrictions on medical products, medical equipment and accessories and related software have been lifted. Export, import and re-export are allowed.
In March, the US Treasury again updated the general license, clarifying the rules for importing Russian goods and exporting American goods to Russia. The Bank of Russia stated that if the National Wealth Fund (NWF), the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation or any of the sanctioned Russian banks are involved in any processing of the transactions, transactions with these goods will be prohibited. .
Reasons for relaxation
Sources for the newspaper Kommersant later assumed that the decision to withdraw fertilizers from US sanctions may have been due to a shortage of fertilizers in the world market due to logistical problems. The three largest container carriers – MSC, Maersk and CMA CGM – stopped transporting goods from Russia as of March 1. And as supplies from small companies continued to arrive, foreign fertilizer consumers feared shortages.
Representatives of the agrochemical market believe that the lifting of US sanctions will help return the usual logistics – the “whales” of container transport will transport essential goods and humanitarian cargo from Russia, they said.
Even taxes on Russian fertilizers could be waived, but anti-dumping measures are still in place in both the US and Europe.
In the USA 6% of potassium, 20% of diammonium phosphate and 13% of carbide fertilizers are Russian. Europe depends on chemistry about two to three times stronger than the Russian Federation.
According to experts’ forecasts, on the backdrop of a possible reorientation of Russian producers to Asian markets, a change in commodity flows could lead to fertilizer shortages in Europe and America for several months.
According to cross-border transport legal expert Maria Lyubimova, the license for Russian fertilizers by the US Treasury shows that “legal structures are unstable” and that restrictive measures against Russia can be relaxed “in the most sensitive areas”.