Thanks to abolishment of customs duties in case of signing the Association Agreement, foreign trade deficit of Ukraine should reduce.

President of the Ukrainian Analytical Center Oleksandr Okhrimenko expressed this opinion, a Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"By results of H1, 2013, total trade turnover between Ukraine and the EU countries made up about USD 20 billion, at the same time, foreign trade deficit made up about USD 4.5 billion. Ukraine's foreign trade deficit must reduce due to the free trade area with the EU, although this reduction will be of long continuance," the expert commented.

According to Okhrimenko, within the frames of the free trade area, commodity turnover between Ukraine and the EU must increase, since import duties will be reduced and, what is most important, bureaucratic obstacles to exports of Ukrainian goods to the EU will be liquidated.

"Liquidation of import duties between the EU and Ukraine will be held stage by stage. Although, during the first year of signing the Association Agreement a great number of Ukrainian goods will be supplied to the EU without import duties. Currently, the average import duty for Ukrainian goods in the EU countries makes up about 7%, following its reduction it will be no higher than 0.5%. This will allow considerably increasing the sale of Ukrainian foodstuffs to the EU countries, metal, chemical products and even construction materials," he noted.

The analyst also added that reduction of import duties will allow starting exports of Ukrainian goods to the EU countries, which earlier could not simply be sold in the EU countries. This concerns medicines, clothes and footwear, furniture, power engineering products and general machinery.

To remind, in case of signing the Association Agreement and the FTA Agreement between Ukraine and the EU, import customs duties for Ukrainian goods will be abolished in import to the European Union countries.

Ukrinform