KYIV. Sept 25 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The surplus of Ukraine’ foreign trade in agriculture in January-July 2015 totaled $5.6 billion, the press service of the Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry of Ukraine has reported, referring to Minister Oleksiy Pavlenko.
The minister said that exports of agricultural products totaled $7.7 billion or 35.7% of Ukraine’s total exports, while imports came to $2.2 billion, or 10.5% of the country’s total imports.
The minister said that the surplus grew by almost 5%.
“This is evidence of the upward pace of development of agricultural sector in crisis conditions for the whole economy. The important factors of the surplus in trade in agriculture are exports of grain (39.9%), oil (23.7%) and oilseeds (7.5%),” Pavlenko said.
He also said that sugar exports grew by almost 100 times compared to 2014, from $361,000 to $37.7 million.
“Exports of poultry and pork fat considerably grew – from $27,000 to $3.8 million. Exports of soybeans rose by 72.2% and pork – by over five times,” the minister added.
Exports of sunflower oil fell by 22.1%, corn – by 7.5%, cheese – by 88.3% or $97 million, bread and confectionary products by 49.7% or $69.9 million, fruit juices – by 47.5%, and barley by 13.2%.
In general, exports of livestock products fell by 24.3%, to $525.6 million. Exports of crops fell by 16.1%, to $7.22 billion.
In January-July 2015, agricultural products worth $3.6 billion (46.6%) were exported to Asian countries, $1.96 billion (25.3%) to EU countries, $1.08 billion (14%) to African countries, $860 million to the CIS (11.1%), $27 million to the U.S. (0.3%) and $200 million to other countries (2.7%).
“Compared to Russia, Ukraine really sees imports replacement. In January-July 2015, imports fell by 45.5%, to $2.16 billion. Fruit, nuts and citron have the largest share of imports in agriculture (11.9%), the share of tobacco is 10.6%, the share of fish, shell fish is 6.6%, cereals – 6.4%, coffee, tea and kitchen herbs 5.1%, chocolate and cacao 4.5%, butter 3.2%, meat and byproducts 2.4%,” Pavlenko said.
The minister said that even with unfavorable global prices, Ukrainian farmers have gradually expanded sales markets to compensate for the loss of the Russian market.
