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bne June 2019 Eastern Europe I 51
From the top 15 trade partners eight
are EU members, but other emerging markets of Russia, Turkey, China and India are all also important partners accounting for between 3% and 7% of Ukraine’s trade. Egypt, Turkey and India accounted for 16.1% of the total trade turnover in February between them.
Poultry meat exports are a good example of how Ukraine has diversified its exports. These were up by 38%
q/q in the first quarter to 103,000 tonnes worth $147mn, according to
the Ukrainian Food Export Board, and the top buyer was Saudi Arabia which bought a quarter (27%) of the total,
or $40mn.
Other big importers of chicken meat, which is one of the biggest agricultural exports after grain, were the Netherlands (16.5%, $24.3mn) and Slovakia (10%, $14mn). Last year, Ukraine exported 330,000 tonnes of chicken meat, making it the seventh largest poultry meat exporter in the world.
Ukraine still needs to export more. It continues to run at least a $2bn a year trade deficit with both Russia and the EU, but posted an overall $336mn trade surplus in the first quarter and in March the surplus rose further to $652mn.
Nevertheless, with heavy debt repayments that have just gone up by a half this year and are expected to grow to between $12bn and $15bn in the coming years, Ukraine is running a current account defi- cit that reached $650mn in March from $299mn in February due to a Eurobond coupon payment, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) reported on April 28.
The $555mn coupon payment on inter- national Eurobonds caused a negative balance in primary income of $111mn in March (vs. a surplus of $501mn in February). In 1Q19, the current account deficit amounted to $422mn versus $525mn in the first quarter of 2018.
But thanks to the ongoing diversification Ukraine is making progress with increasing exports and the goods trade deficit in March contracted to $800mn from $1.0bn in the previous month.
Ukraine trade turnover (top 15 partners) February 2018
Ukraine trade (top 15 partners) February 2019
Source: Ukrstat
Ukraine grain production, exports mn tonnes
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