For the first time in history, Ukraine began to import cucumbers grown indoors from Russia.
This was reported by the EastFruit portal, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
In addition to Russia, Ukraine purchases cucumbers from Turkey and Belarus, but at the moment Russian cucumbers are purchased at the lowest price - $0,82-1,09 per kg for smooth cucumbers and $1,23-1,64 per kg for lumpy cucumbers. At the same time, purchase prices for Ukrainian cucumbers are $1,44-1,70 g, and the price for Turkish cucumbers is only $0,82-1,09 per kg - lower than in Ukraine.
“Russian cucumber comes to the market at the lowest prices among all competitors, because... in Russia there is now a downward trend in cucumber prices,” noted Evgeniy Kuzin, head of international projects at Fruit-Inform.com.
The situation is the same with other greenhouse vegetables, notes economist Alexander Okhrimenko.
“Prices for greenhouse vegetables are very dependent on gas tariffs. Gas has become more expensive, and the cost of greenhouse vegetables has risen sharply - it is already significantly higher than prices on the world market. Ukrainian greenhouse vegetables are already very expensive; it is now more profitable to import them from Russia, rather than grow them here.
In general, here everything comes down to gas tariffs. For industry, the gas price is now 35 UAH per cubic meter. This is very expensive, twice or more than just recently. It is clear that with such expensive gas, growing something in greenhouses here is unprofitable. It is not surprising that the import of greenhouse vegetables has increased sharply - they are brought from Russia, Turkey, Belarus, etc.
Once upon a time, Ukraine supplied greenhouse vegetables to Russia. Until 2014, they occupied about 12% of the Russian market. Then ties were severed, and now, on the contrary, Russian greenhouse vegetables are supplied to Ukraine.
Ukrainian vegetables accounted for about 98% of the domestic market, that is, there was practically no import. Ukraine exported greenhouse vegetables. The share of imports in the segment of open-ground vegetables was already high; we had about 40% of our own vegetables. We will see how the ratio of exports and imports in this segment will change next year,” said Alexander Okhrimenko in a comment to a PolitNavigator correspondent.