Ukraine may be leading player on world food market in five years - expert
2012-10-15 15:52:10
Development of the export potential in the agrarian sphere may turn Ukraine into a leading player on the world foodstuffs market in five years.
This was emphasized by head of InvestUkraine, a structural subdivision of the State Agency of Investments and National Projects, Serhiy Yevtushenko at a round table “Problems of the Agrarian Sector of Ukraine Development” in Kyiv, the agency's press service informs.
“Ukraine has all prerequisites for such a statement. First, this is availability of natural resources in the form of black soils (30% of world stocks), which make up 54% of arable lands in the country. Another factor is that up-to-date technologies start to be implemented in Ukraine's agriculture,” the expert noted.
The InvestUkraine head also paid attention to the fact that large, according to world standards, companies with a land bank of 300,000-500,000 ha are being created in Ukraine. They all are working according to world standards and enter western exchanges, in particular, the Warsaw, Frankfurt and London Stock Exchanges. “They receive very serious assessments from financiers, respectively their capitalization grows rather quickly. In other words, money comes to this sector, which creates real wealth for their stockholders and it occurs quicker against other sectors,” Yevtushenko believes.
At the same time, he expressed his opinion regarding measures, which should be taken for fundamental changes in the sector. In particular, the matter concerns implementation of private property for land, which will enable agricultural holdings to feel great confidence in long-term planning of their activities.
Separate efforts, in his conviction, should be aimed at stimulation of development of the export-oriented infrastructure in the agrarian sector, “since very soon, we will lack production capacities.” This concerns, primarily, expansion of the infrastructure in the railway and river transport, at ports, “including construction of new ports,” the analyst said.
He also stressed that a mandatory condition is realization of complex state programs on boosting domestic production of agricultural machinery. “Currently, we lack the agricultural machinery and it is not produced in Ukraine, but is actually fully imported. This is simply spending of the resource, when, having such a consumption market, we do not have domestic production,” Yevtushenko stressed.