July 31, 2013. The trade turnover in the Ural Customs Administration area decreased by 8.9% in the first half of 2013 and the freight turnover declined by 15.9% against a year earlier as well, the Administration’s press service reports.

At the same time, the number of cargo manifests processed rose by 12.4% and the number of foreign trade operators rose by 5.5%; the number if exporting countries dropped by 1.6%, the number of importing countries has remained the same.

According to the customs officers, the decrease in the trade turnover involving the CIS member states had to do with decreased exports to Ukraine (-25.2%) and imports from Ukraine (-40.7%) and Uzbekistan (-61.6%), even though the amount of export to Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan rose by 2.8 times and by 2.7%, respectively.

The foreign trade turnover in the Ural Customs Administration came to $9.9bn in January-July 2013. The share of foreign trade with the countries of the far abroad was 85.8% of the total trading volume, ($8.5bn), the share of foreign trade with the CIS member states was 14.2% ($1.4bn). Imports reached 29.4% of the total foreign trade volume ($2.9bn), exports came to 70.6% of the total foreign trade volume ($7bn).