Intergovernmental Clearing Agreement
From Supply Chain Management Encyclopedia
Russian: Межправительственное клиринговое соглашение
Generalized Flow Chart of Intergovernmental Clearing Agreement[1]
EXAMPLES:
- Bilateral clearing accounts have been established with all states of FSU (former Soviet republics). However, it was only one intergovernmental clearing agreement in 1994; the “Roscontract” agreement with Russia which specified the intergovernmental exchange of crude oil from Russia for strategic products from Belarus, on a balanced basis. A successor agreement has been signed for 1995 as has a new clearing agreement with Uzbekistan, calling for the exchange of cotton from Uzbekistan for strategic products from Belarus, on a balanced basis[2].
- The transition of the NIS towards independent foreign exchange, financial, monetary and credit policies has not yet “buried” the idea of preserving the leading role played by the rouble in payment and account relations. Efforts are being taken to implement the idea of a multilateral clearing through the Interstate Commonwealth Bank set up in 1993. However, only a few operations in the framework of the intergovernmental reciprocal deliveries of goods were carried out according to the pattern where the Russian rouble was used as a price, account and settlement unit. According to non-official data, the Interstate Bank carried out in 1996 only 11 settlement operations under multilateral clearing with four currencies in the trade volume beyond 20 billion roubles. Experts believe that constant delays of delivery dates and other contractual terms cause imbalances and forced credits to one of the sides. It is usually Russia that becomes a debtor country. The Interstate Bank turned out to be unprepared to service this type of operations even in small amounts[3].
References
- ↑ Designed by the author using Laurila, J. Finnish-Soviet Clearing Trade and Payment System: History and Lessons - Bank of Finland (Helsinki). – Helsinki: Oy Trio-Offset Ab, 1995
- ↑ Belarus – Recent Economic Developments – IMF Staff Country Report # 95/99, October, 1995
- ↑ Designing New Trade Policies in The Transition Economies - OCDE/GD(97)199 - http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?doclanguage=en&cote=ocde/gd(97)199
