The goods turnover between Ukraine and the United States in January-August 2019 grew by 16% year-over-year, to $2.6 billion, First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economic Development and Trade Stepan Kubiv has said.
“Bilateral trade in the eight months of 2018 increased by 16% and amounted to almost $2.6 billion. Exports to the United States grew by almost 32% and imports by 11%,” Kubiv said, opening the first official U.S. trade mission in Kyiv on Monday.
He also said that over three and a half years in Ukraine 80 factories were built with the attraction of foreign investment or are under construction. The leader in investing in the construction of factories is Germany, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
“The outright leader in attracting investments is Lviv region, where 18 factories with the attraction of foreign investors have been built or their construction is ending since 2015. The second place in attracting investments in the number of projects is occupied by Vinnytsia and Ivano-Frankivsk regions – six factories each,” Kubiv said.
The U.S. trade mission in Ukraine consists of four sections – IT, agriculture, infrastructure, and energy. The United States represents three companies in each of these areas.
The transport enterprises of Ukraine in January-September 2018 reduced carriage of goods by 1.1% compared to January-September 2017, to 462.5 million tonnes.
According to the State Statistics Service, freight turnover for this period decreased by 2.6%, to 247.9 billion tonne-kilometers. According to statistical data, in January-September 2018 railways transported inside the country and for exports 199.1 million tonnes of cargo, which is 3.5% less than in January-September 2017.
Transportation of coal decreased by 4.4%, oil and petroleum products by 11.8%, grain and cereals by 14%, cement by 3.9%, construction materials by 8.8%, timber by 9.6%, coke by 2.8%, ferrous metals by 1.3%. At the same time, transportation of chemical and mineral fertilizers increased by 2.3%, iron and manganese ore by 3.5%, and scrap metal by 0.3%.
The volume of cargo pumping through pipelines in January-September 2018 compared with January-September 2017 fell by 4.4%, to 80.5 million tonnes.
Foreign trade operations were conducted with partners from 210 countries. The ratio of coverage of imports by exports in Ukraine was 0.9.
The deficit of Ukraine’s foreign trade in goods in January-May 2018 increased by 1.4 times compared with January-May 2017 and amounted to $2.055 billion, the State Statistics Service has said.
Russia is still on the first place among main export markets for Ukrainian goods (7,8% of all trade volume), 4 years ago a share of Russia was more than a quarter of all Ukrainian export..
The second goes Poland (7,0%), the third one is Turkey (6,2%).
Also in top-ten export destinations are Italy, India, China, Germany, Egypt, Hungary, the Netherlands. The USA is the 13-th export market of Ukraine, the UK and France are not presented even in top-20 of the main markets for Ukrainian goods.
The flow of agricultural goods between Ukraine and the European Union (EU) in January-March 2018 totaled $2.2 billion, according to a posting on the website of the Institute of Agrarian Economy research center. Deputy Director of the center Mykola Puhachev said that the surplus was $845 million. “In Q1 2018, both imports grew by 27%, to $669 million and exports by 15%, to $1.513 billion year-over-year,” he said.
The largest trade partners of Ukraine in the EU are Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Germany and France, with the total share of the agricultural goods flow of over 72%. According to the report, grain and oilseeds, as well as sunflower oil and meal provide for the main volumes of supplies from Ukraine to Europe.
Ukraine imports mainly grain, oilseeds, cacao beans and chocolate, various food, waste of processing industry, spirit and alcohol.
Puhachev said that in January-March 2018, Ukrainian exporters fully used duty free quotas for what, corn, honey, apple and grape juices, malt, the quarterly quota for poultry and the half-year quota for butter. For other food the average usage of quotas is rather low.
“In 2018, the quotas for some goods are growing as it was planned, in particular, sugar, starch, juices, barley cereal, wheat, corn, lamb meat and other products. In addition, preferential quotas for eight goods are in effect for Ukraine: honey, grape juice, barley cereal, preserved tomatoes, oats, wheat, corn and barley,” the expert said.
