Most of its revenue comes from a regional customs union dominated by South Africa.
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That changed with the formation of Mercosur, an incipient customs union also involving Paraguay and Uruguay.
African Customs Union (SACU), and worker remittances from South Africa supplement domestically earned income.
It has a free-trade deal with the block, but is not part of the supposed customs union.
However, it failed to ratify the customs union and its ports and airports remain closed to Cypriot traffic.
Moscow will continue to use the customs union as leverage to gain more strategic assets in Belarus and Kazakhstan.
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On the import side, Argentina cannot raise tariffs on its own because it belongs to the Mercosur customs union.
How does the European Parliament view Ukraine joining the Customs Union with Russia?
The common Customs Code stage of the customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan came into effect July 6.
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What we must avoid doing is suggesting that either a federation, or an enhanced customs union is a realistic option.
The first step towards the 19th-century unification of Germany was, after all, the formation of a customs union, the Zollverein.
On January 1 Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan entered a customs union--one can imagine the bliss dividend for their collective citizenry.
George Soros, the Hungarian-born American financier, has proposed a regional customs union for the Balkans, with currencies pegged to the euro.
Mercosur has not managed to keep a common front in trade talks with outsiders, as a customs union is supposed to do.
But more than 50% of its trade is within Europe, partly due to a customs union that has been in effect since 1995.
Swaziland's government blames the financial woes on a drop in income from the Southern African Customs Union following a new tariff deal.
In the 1990s, some Argentines began to see their future in Mercosur, the putative customs union linking them with Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
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But Domingo Cavallo, Argentina's new economy minister, has talked (though not publicly) of Mercosur scrapping its customs union, and becoming simply a free-trade area.
Kozhara also said that while Ukraine is moving towards European integration, the signing of the Customs Union agreement with Russia is also a possibility.
Under the rules of the Southern African Customs Union, a fledgling free-trade area, cars made in Botswana can be exported to South Africa almost duty-free.
The disarray of the customs union has gone hand-in-hand with a lack of progress in deepening Mercosur by achieving common policies towards trade among members.
As the foreign-ministry document asserts, Russia needs to consolidate the former Soviet space by, for example, pushing the customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
It wants it in a customs union with Kazakhstan and Belarus.
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It has pushed the widening of its four-country Mercosur customs union.
The customs union might survive, and develop further, if Brazil were to accept its partners' desire for lower external tariffs all round, especially on capital goods.
Turkey met the last condition for accession talks in July 2005, when it extended a customs union with the EU to all new member states, including Cyprus.
Nor do they envisage a customs union, with a shared external tariff, since that would force either low- or high-tariff countries to make dramatic changes in economic policy.
His obstinacy over the customs union was the last straw.
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He considers the customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which comes into effect on January 1st 2012, as the nucleus of a Russian equivalent of the European Union's growth-boosting integration.
That makes sense economically: Ukraine exports more to the former Soviet Union than to the EU, and joining a customs union would deliver cheaper gas, as the Kremlin has made clear.
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