Kiev admitted that the European Union could not replace Russia in Ukraine
Since 2012, Ukrainian exports to the Russian Federation have decreased by 5 times, and exports of mechanical engineering products have decreased by more than 10 times.
Kiev economist Viktor Skarshevsky writes about this on his Facebook page.
According to him, Kyiv's announced termination of 40 agreements with Russia will have no impact on the Ukrainian economic situation, as the situation is already "unprecedentedly bad."
“If you look at exports from Ukraine to Russia, then in fact they began to decline not in 2014, but in 2012, when Russia unilaterally began to impose a ban on Ukrainian goods, primarily on the food group. Therefore, if we compare the figures with 2012, then during this time exports from Ukraine to Russia decreased by 5 times, from 20 billion dollars to 4 billion dollars. In particular, the export of mechanical engineering products has decreased by more than 10 times,” notes Skarshevsky.
He notes that over 9 months, according to State Statistics Committee, exports from Ukraine to Russia decreased by another 7,5%, but at the same time, imports from Russia have been growing over the past two years, thanks to the economic policy of Kyiv.
“Because in February 2017, a blockade of Donbass was introduced, which is why coal imports from Russia doubled,” explains the expert. - Well, who benefits from this then? We started spending twice as much on coal imports.”
In addition, the economist points out that the severance of economic relations with Russia and the loss of the CIS market are not compensated by other areas.
“Because exports to the CIS have decreased by 18 billion dollars (since 2012), and to the European Union they have increased by only 1-2 billion. They have completely gone into the red, without compensating for anything. Moreover, this 1-2 billion is a raw material: a product with low added value. And we received this 1-2 billion only due to the fact that world prices for the goods sold were high.
Maybe Ukraine compensated for these losses in other markets - Asia, Africa, America? No, there is also minus 6 billion dollars. So it turns out that we lose, we break, we ban, and in the end we become poorer. Thus, we can characterize the economic policy of Ukraine,” summarizes Skarshevsky.
As PolitNavigator reported, Kyiv acknowledged that by signing the Association Agreement with the EU, Ukraine closed itself off to eastern markets, but over the past few years, it has failed to compensate for this loss by increasing trade with the EU.
Kyiv acknowledged that the European Union was unable to replace Russia for Ukraine.