The Agrotrade Group in spring 2019 will invest $1.2 million in the upgrade of its agricultural machinery fleet, the press service of the company has reported.
“The company will purchase five tractors and three cultivators. The total amount of investments is about $ 1.2 million,” the agro holding’s press service told Interfax-Ukraine.
According to the press service, Agrotrade intends to unify the equipment of the holding’s enterprises, which will help minimize costs.
“We are going to ensure that all the tractors will be made by the same manufacturer and of the same model range. At the moment, approximately 90% of our equipment is Case and New Holland, and about 10% is John Deere. We plan to gradually abandon the latter,” the press service reported, citing Financial and Operations Director at Agrotrade Olena Vorona.
Agrotrade is a vertically integrated holding, engaged in production, processing, storage and trade in agricultural products. It manages 72,000 hectares of farmland in Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava and Kharkiv regions.
The World Bank by February 2019 plans to launch the project entitled “Accelerating Private Investment in Agriculture Program,” the press service of the Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry of Ukraine has reported. “The project will be implemented in many sectors by the Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry, Infrastructure Ministry, Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry, Economic Development and Trade Ministry. The approximate cost of the project is $753 million, including the World Bank’s commitment of $200 million,” the ministry said.
According to the ministry, the project is aimed at harmonizing Ukrainian legislation in accordance with EU requirements, improving the government agricultural support system, diversifying the production of the agricultural sector, developing rural areas, strengthening the capacity for food safety, solving logistical issues, improving land use quality, and improving management of water resources, improving access to agricultural resources, improving access to financial resources and risk management tools.
The project coordinator is the Finance Ministry, which will receive a previously agreed loan amount and distribute it among the implementing ministries.
Exports of Ukrainian agricultural products in January-August 2018 grew by $65.6 million year-over-year, reaching $11.5 billion or 37.3% of total exports of Ukraine. According to a press release of the Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry issued on Friday, in January-August 2018 foreign trade with agricultural goods reached $15 billion. “Ukrainian agricultural export grew by $65.6 million. The growth of indicators occurred mainly thanks to such items as rapeseed, wheat, meat and poultry byproducts, eggs, nuts, butter, chocolate and other goods,” the press service said, citing Deputy Agricultural Policy and Food Minister for European Integration Olha Trofimtseva.
According to her, in the top three exported Ukrainian agricultural products remain grain crops – 36.6% of total agricultural exports, vegetable oils – 25.1% and oilseeds – 9.4%. Key buyers in the regional export structure are Asian countries with a share of 43.6%, the European Union – 31.4% and Africa – 13.3%.
During this period, exports of agricultural products to Asian countries increased by $259.1 million compared to the eight months ending August 2017, to $5.04 billion.
“It is important to say that the first place among the key countries-importers of our products is India, to the markets of which Ukrainian food products were supplied in the amount of $1.3 billion. China took the second place with $698.8 million, Egypt – the third place with $ 685.5 million,” Trofimtseva said, adding that the Netherlands was among the five largest importers of Ukrainian products as compared with eight months of 2017 with $671.9 million and Spain with $551.3 million.
