Ukraine's negative foreign trade balance has almost doubled
In the first two months, compared to the same period last year, the total volume of Ukrainian exports increased by 17%, but at the same time the volume of imports increased by 20%. Alpari analyst Maxim Parkhomenko writes about this today in the Ukrainian weekly “Zerkalo Nedeli”.
“The balance for the same period also remained negative, but if last year its value was at around -430 million dollars, then this year this figure increased to -730 million. The negative balance is a chronic problem of the Ukrainian economy,” the author reports .
According to him, the main volume of exports falls on several sectors of the economy.
“Grain exports still account for 19% of export volumes, but over the year the exports of grain itself decreased by 1,6%. The volume of metal exports also increased. The main share of this export group falls on ferrous metals. Over the past year, their total volume increased by 28% - to $1,7 billion,” writes Parkhomenko.
A large share of Ukrainian imports (21%) in general falls on petroleum products and materials for their processing. Ukraine began importing 30% more machinery and production equipment.
“Trade with our neighbors is not going well - with most of them we have a negative balance, as well as with the CIS countries: we sell less than we buy to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia. Since the latter, the share of imports has only increased, and it mainly comes from petroleum products - 50% of total imports. Our exports to the Russian Federation decreased by 6%, despite the fact that the volume of imports increased by 25%,” reports Parkhomenko.
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