14:19 19.08.2014

Yatseniuk projects Ukraine's harvest loss in 2014 at 15%

2 min read
Yatseniuk projects Ukraine's harvest loss in 2014 at 15%

Russia's annexation of Crimea and the situation in Donetsk and Luhansk regions will reduce Ukraine's gross harvest by 15% in 2014, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk said while meeting with agrarians in Cherkasy region on Tuesday.

Yatseniuk said that amid military aggression the investment appeal of Ukraine's agrarian business should be boosted. He reiterated that the government is not looking to take tax benefits away from agricultural manufacturers to fill in the budget.

"The Cabinet of Ministers is ready to hear agrarian positions on the reform of preferential taxation to increase the effectiveness of agricultural production," he said.

In July, Ukraine's Hydrometeorological Center projected the grain harvest at 63 million tonnes in 2014. Last week, the Agriculture Ministry predicted that the grain harvest this year will exceed last year's harvest (which reached 63 million tonnes).

During the visit to the Cherkasy region, Yatseniuk said, citing the customs service statistics, that export from Ukraine to Russia in the first half of 2014 had gone down $2.5 billion, whereas the export to the EU countries had gone up $1.3 billion.

"We need to find ways to increase the supply of products to the EU countries in the situation Ukraine is in now," Yatseniuk said.

According to information earlier released by the Ukrainian State Statistics Service, the export of goods from Ukraine to Russia in the first half of 2014 went down 23.3%, or $1.74 billion, from 2013, and the import went down 14.4%, or $1.38 billion.

According to the report, the export to the EU countries went up 14.9%, or by $1.23 billion, reaching some $9.5 billion, and the import went down 17.8%, or by $2.15 billion, reaching some $10 billion.

As a result, the share of export to the EU in the general structure of Ukrainian export went up from 27.3% to 33.1%, the share of import stayed at 35.4%, the share of export to Russia went down from 24.7% to 20%, and the share of import increased from 27.9% to 29.1%.

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