The number of cattle in Ukraine as of April 1, 2018 amounted to almost 3.86 million animals, which is 4.5% less than on the same date in 2017. According to the State Statistics Service, the number of cows for this period decreased by 4.3% and amounted to 2.024 million animals. The number of pigs decreased by 8.1%, to 6.135 million, sheep and goats fell by 4.1%, to 1.516 million.
Poultry stock in the country increased by 1.2% compared to April 1, 2017, amounting to 197.557 million birds.
As reported, the number of cattle in Ukraine (excluding the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the Anti-Terrorist Operations zone) as of January 1, 2018 amounted to 3.628 million animals, which is 1.5% less than on the same date in 2017. The number of pigs decreased by 8.2%, to 6.12 million head, sheep and goats grew by 0.1%, to 1.316 million. Poultry stock in the country increased by 1.7% as compared to January 1, 2017, amounting to about 205 million birds.
Exports of Ukrainian agrarian products to European countries in January-February 2018 increased by 28.1%, or by $224.7 million, and amounted to $1.025 billion compared to the same period of 2017, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food reported referring to the deputy minister for European integration, Olha Trofimtseva. “Thus, at the moment, the EU accounts for 36.5% of our agricultural exports,” she said.
On the whole, the foreign trade in agricultural products in the first two months of 2018 amounted to $3.7 billion, of which $2.8 billion fall for the export of Ukrainian agrarian and food products.
“In the first two months of this year, Ukrainian agrarian exports increased by $102.1 million compared to the corresponding period of 2017 and reached $2.8 billion. Our traditional export leaders are cereals with a 35.3% share, vegetable oil with 24.1% and oilseeds with 12%,” the deputy minister added. During this period, export of Ukrainian poultry meat grew by $29 million, eggs by $11.4 million, butter by $20 million, chocolate by $7.5 million, grape wines by $6.1 million, she said.
According to Trofimtseva, in January-February 2018, the largest importer of Ukrainian agrarian and food products was India, which imported Ukrainian products worth $335.9 million. The top five trade partners included Spain with $201.1 million worth of imported Ukrainian products, the Netherlands with $199.3 million, Egypt with $189.6 million and Italy with $185.6 million.
AGRARIAN, AGRI EXPORT, EU, IMPORT, INDIA
Auditors of the State Fiscal Service (SFS) of Ukraine carried out 16,600 surprise checks of the facilities with the largest risks of tax evasion in 2017, the service’s official newspaper SFS Visnyk reported on its website. According to the report, special attention was paid to the VAT payment schemes. A large number of tax evasion schemes were discovered in the highest risk sector – the sales of agricultural products, the service said.
In addition, the checks revealed invalid transactions for the purchase of goods or services that were not produced or provided in the amount indicated in source documents and/or it was impossible to supply these goods or services due to the lack of resources for their production, storage and transportation by the supplier; absence of source documents, accounting registries, financial statements and documents related to the calculation and payment of taxes and fees, which are required by law.
All in all, these inspections exposed 6,200 beneficiaries, UAH 14.8 billion of VAT paid under fraudulent schemed, including UAH 2.6 billion of VAT from risky importers.
According to the inspection results, additional UAH 16,200 billion are expected to be sent to the state budget, of which UAH 8.1 billion were agreed (UAH 1.3 billion of which have already been paid).
