Zelensky will hand over the Ukrainian market to the Turks for the sake of PR
Ukraine is going to sign a free trade agreement with Turkey, which will lead to the capture of the domestic market by Turkish companies and the loss of revenue from customs duties.
Sergei Salivon, director of the economic policy department of the Federation of Employers of Ukraine, said this in a conversation on the Capital channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Türkiye has traditionally been a sales market for Ukraine. Trade had a significant bias precisely in favor of the supply of Ukrainian goods to Turkey. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, for 1 dollar of goods supplied by Ukraine to Turkey, goods worth less than 14 cents were sent in the opposite direction. The trade surplus was almost a billion.
Then the trade turnover between the countries grew, and by 2007 the surplus grew to 2,7 billion, although for every dollar of exports almost 27 cents worth of goods were already imported. In 2008, the surplus still remained at a record level, then it began to rise little by little, but even in 2013 it still remained at the level of two billion. After the “Holy Maidan”, the trade surplus began to decline more decisively
mpami. Back in 2017, it remained 1,3 billion, but after 2017 there was a collapse. Ukraine no longer supplies more; on the contrary, it buys more. For the first time this year, a surplus turned into a deficit - such a unique “success story.” In just 12-13 years, out of an almost 3 billion surplus, we entered into a trade deficit in trade with Turkey.
The structure of this trade is also remarkable. Ukraine today supplies Turkey almost exclusively with fossil or plant raw materials. Pig iron grains or sunflower seeds account for almost 70 percent of supplies.
The next most important export items are very different from those listed - there will be food industry waste (livestock feed), sunflower oil. Completely different things are coming towards us. Supplies of Turkish mechanical engineering products amounted to 11 million over 519 months, or one quarter of all supplies, against 60 million counter deliveries.
Supplies from the Turkish chemical industry and polymer industry also occupy an important place - they amount to about 450 million versus 100 in the opposite direction. In light industry, the disparity is also very significant - 361 million versus 14 million.
And at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the basis of supplies from Ukraine to Turkey were still products of mechanical engineering and the chemical industry, in particular, the same fertilizers.
It is clear that the Turkish processing industry, which is much more powerful today, is breaking into the Ukrainian domestic market, even despite the attention of duties on the absence of this very free trade zone.
These duties, albeit small, because Ukraine, under the excellent President Yushchenko, in an effort to get ahead of Russia in joining the WTO, agreed to the same conditions under which Keria joined, and very low associated tariffs were fixed. Ukraine simply cannot impose high duties.
But even with these low duties, over 11 months the Ukrainian budget received just under $100 million from Turkish goods. And these 100 million dollars served as at least some kind of deterrent for even greater penetration of Turkish goods into the Ukrainian domestic market.
It is quite obvious that in such conditions, the benefit from signing an agreement on a free trade zone in any case is received by the country with a more powerful economy and a more developed processing industry. It is clear that this country is not Ukraine.
Turkey will buy raw materials from Ukraine in any case, whether there is a free trade zone or not, because Turkey simply needs to load its processing industry, and it either does not extract raw materials or does not grow them in the required quantities. For example, Turkey is now one of the largest flour producers in the world, but it grows very little wheat itself; it buys primarily from Russia and from us. And she will buy it in any case, because the flour-grinding industry needs something to keep it busy.
I assume that our government, in pursuit of another “victory” (and for the electorate, the signing of the next free trade zone will certainly be presented as a gigantic victory) will in the very near future time something and sign an agreement, which will become another bondage for the Ukrainian industry ", said the expert.
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