Ukraine's foreign trade in agricultural products

Abstract

Foreign trade in food products and raw materials for their production is an important part of the development of the Ukraineʼs economy. The products of the Ukrainian agro-industrial sector are in demand on the world market, and their export is part of ensuring Ukraineʼs competitiveness. The pur­pose of the article is to substantiate the directions of development of foreign trade in food products and raw materials for their production, from the point of view of the expediency of export and import. The specified goal is defined in the hypothesis that it is possible to distinguish certain groups of food products and raw materials for their production in accordance with changes in the indices of price and quantitative terms of trade in foreign economic activity. The methodological basis of the study is the defined indices of price and quantitative terms of foreign trade for 2021–2022, their comparison and positioning on the map. A number of important trends in foreign trade were identified, namely: a negative balance in general, a positive balance in the agri­cultural products and food sector, a high level of export and import concentration, a high share of products with a low level of processing, an increase in the share of imports and a decrease in the share of exports of food products and raw materials for their produc­tion in GDP. According to the results of the analysis of changes in the price and quantitative terms of trade, the positioning of food products and raw materials for their production and their further distribution into four groups were carried out. The first group consists of products for which the indices of price and quantitative terms of trade are increasing. The second group consists of products for which the quantitative terms of trade index is increasing and the price terms of trade index is decreasing. The third group is products for which the indices of price and quantitative terms of trade are decreasing. The fourth group includes products for which the index of price terms of trade is increasing and the index of quantitative terms of trade is decreasing. Consideration of direc­tions for the development of exports and imports of food products and raw materials for their production took place for each commodity group of products in accordance with the Harmonized System (HS). The directions of development of exports and imports of food products and raw materials for their production in Ukraine are substantiated by the analysing trends in changes in quantitative and qualitative terms of trade, the main characteristics of exports and imports of products and the import-export coverage ratio. The conducted study made it possible to identify the pros­pects of the studied products in foreign trade in terms of benefits for the country as a whole and companies in particular.