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Eurasia Daily, 14 Nov 2017

The quality of food products supplied from Russia and Kyrgyzstan to Kazakhstan degraded, the head of the Public Health Committee at the Kazakh Healthcare Ministry Jandarbek Bekshin has announced today, on Nov 13.

“We have fixed the trend towards worsening quality of Kyrgyz foodstuffs. Last year, 4% of the goods did not meet [quality requirements], this year the figure is 10%, which means the quality degraded by two and a half times,” Bekshin said. He reminded that before entering the EAEU, Kyrgyzstan was supposed to declare and certify more than 1,500 types of goods, but then the situation changed. In 2016, the number of types of goods to be certified dropped to 242, and within ten months of this year to 126.

“The number of declared goods was cut by 12 times. It means that a great impact of “grey”, illegal products are being imported,” the official said. He noted that under analysis carried out in October 23.4% of foodstuffs and 44% of consumer goods from Kyrgyzstan do not meet technical requirements.

At the same time, Bekshin noted, most poor-quality goods come to the Kazakh market from Russian producers. “As you may know, 52% from the whole amount of poor-quality goods are from the Russian Federation. The second is Kyrgyzstan. Naturally, the volume of supply from Russia is incomparably higher, so the amount of poor-quality goods registered is higher too,” he said.

As EADaily reported earlier, starting from September, the relations between Astana and Bishkek suddenly went bad. Kyrgyzstan accused Kazakhstan of interfering into its election process; in response, Kazakhstan toughened control on the border with Kyrgyzstan that resulted in huge traffic jams at major border checkpoints.

Both republics are in search for new occasions to harm each other. Kyrgyzstan banned imports of non-enriched flour from Kazakhstan. On October 27, Bishkek accused Astana of lying and violating principles of cooperation within the EAEU.

Judging by the recent statements from Astana, now, on the background of the unabated collision with Kyrgyzstan, it has claims to Russian producers.