The customs union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan has set an import tariff for raw cane sugar at $140 per tonne for December, unchanged from November and October, the union's executive commission said on Tuesday. The tariff rate, pegged to the New York sugar price, corresponds to the October average price of 26.94 cents per lb or $594.01 per tonne, according to a statement from the commission.
The commission sets the tariff before the 15th day of every month for the next month and bases its rate on the average price for the preceding month. Analysts at the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies had said they do not expect any large raw sugar imports from June - when the tariff rose to $200 per tonne from $50 in May - at least until the end of the year. Russia, the world's third-largest sugar buyer, imported around 1.9 million tonnes of raw sugar in January-August this year, the bulk of that in May because of the low tariff. The tariff was $239 per tonne in July, $203 in August and $171 in September.