Ukraine planning to facilitate trade with South American countries
2011-11-30 11:02:00
The Ukrainian government is planning to significantly expand the geographic structure of Ukrainian exports by setting up the regime of free trade with South American countries. Despite its remoteness, this region is interesting for Ukrainian businesses. The domestic engineering industry should benefit the most from the facilitation of trade, according to the Kommersant-Ukraine magazine, UKRINFORM reported.
According to the government commissioner for European integration, Valeriy Pyatnytsky, the Cabinet of Ministers is considering establishing a free trade area (FTA) with Mercosur countries (the customs union of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay).
According to the State Statistics Service, in January-September 2011, Ukrainian producers exported USD 409.8 million worth of goods to these countries, importing USD 514.3 million worth of products.
The publication said that Ukraine's initiatives on trade liberalization had until now been focused in the CIS countries, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Ukraine now has free trade agreements with the CIS countries, Georgia and Macedonia, similar agreements with Montenegro and the EFTA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) are to be ratified, and negotiations with the EU, Serbia, Israel, Canada, Syria and Morocco are being held.
However, the positive effect from trade liberalization may reduce the geographical remoteness of South America from Ukraine. For comparison, an analysis of the prospects for creating a free trade area with Canada shows that this simplification will accelerate annual GDP growth in Ukraine only by 0.03 percentage points.