Ukraine increases level of agricultural gross production

Ukraine has increased a level of agricultural gross output, minister of agricultural policy and food Mykola Prysyazhnyuk said during a press conference "Agricultural locomotive of economy: results of agricultural sector in 2012 and strategic goals for 2013," ForUm correspondent reports.

"Production of agricultural gross output is expected to amount 222.2 billion UAH in 2012. The growth is obvious compared to previous years. Thus, the average rate for 2009-2011 was 208 billion UAH," he noted.

According to the minister, during eight months of 2012, the overall budget of agribusiness enterprises received 29.4 billion UAH of tax (33.2 billion UAH for 2009-2011).

"At of today, the agricultural production is a significant part of the Ukrainian foreign trade and remains the only area of the economy, which has a positive trade balance - 6.8 billion dollar. The total foreign trade turnover of Ukraine for nine months of this year amounted to 111.6 billion dollar. And the foreign trade turnover of agricultural products amounted to 17.9 billion dollar," Prysyazhnyuk said.

The minister also stressed that the most important factors of the positive balance of this year is a large amount of grain exports (36.6%), sunflower oil (23.9%) and sunflower seeds (9.3%).

According to Prysyazhnyuk, in recent years the geography of exports has expanded, and Ukrainian exporters have entered the markets of Japan, Taiwan, Switzerland, UAE and South Africa together with the main importers of Ukrainian products including Egypt, Iran and Spain.