Page 24 - Eastern Europe Outlook 2020

Media. AliExpress is the leading crossborder operator in Russia, with a market share of 40%. A lower duty free limit would create additional incentives for domestic e-commerce players to develop.
● Agriculture
The Russian agricultural sector has been on a tear for several years. Following massive state backed investment, grain production has soared and this has probably been one of the most successful reforms of the Putin era.
Grain harvests have increased and set a new all time record, including for the entire Soviet period, in 2017 of 135mn tonnes of grain. In the marketing year running to the middle of 2020 Russia is expected to produce 121mn tonnes of grain, ahead of the 118mn it produced in 2019.
This has also led to soaring exports and Russia is battling it out with Ukraine for the title of “world’s biggest grain exporter”. Russia came second in 2019 with 48mn tonnes, and Ukraine’s production is also increasing so it is likely to retain the lead in 2020 too. But grain exports are already the third biggest export product and will earn Russia circa $24bn in 2020.
And progress is not limited to grain. EU sanctions have protected pork producers which have also rapidly expanded their production to the point where Russia is now largely self sufficient in pork. Russia already went from a net importer of chicken meat to become a net exporter several years ago. Now it is working on beef where production is also growing fast.
Food processing also got a fillip from the ban on EU imports and famously a cheese production sector has been created from scratch in the last few years. Investment continues to pour into this sector led by the large food retail companies. Fish and aquaculture has been one of the fastest growing businesses in the last few years, as ​bne IntelliNews h​ as been reporting. 2020 will see more of the same.
Minister of Agriculture Dmitry Patrushev gave an interview to Kommersant in December and said Russian agriculture is set to grow 2% y/y in 2019, implying six consecutive years of real advances.
24​ EASTERN EUROPE Outlook 2020​ ​ ​www.intellinews.com