Ukraine exported goods worth a total of $4 billion in January – $20.9 million more than the value of its imports, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine reported on March 18 via Facebook.
Exports grew by 9.2 percent year-on-year, fueled by a rise in the amount of exported agricultural products and ferrous metals. Exports of these goods were together $2.45 billion, or around 60 percent of total exports.
Exports of grain jumped the most – up 60 percent compared to last year’s figure – to reach $781 million, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine reported.
According to Stepan Kubiv, the first vice prime minister of Ukraine, the European Union was Ukraine’s main trading partner with an export share of 44.6 percent of the country’s total trade volume.
Among Ukraine’s other big trading partners are China, the United States and Turkey. Together they accounted for 16.7 percent of Ukrainian exports.
January’s trade results are a big improvement on 2018’s figures. Last year in January trade was in deficit by $294.1 million.
Things got worse over the year, with Ukraine’s trade deficit in 2018 in the end ballooning to $5.8 billion, double the level seen in 2017, according to the State Statistics Service.
Still trading with Russia
Despite a five-year war with Russia and thousands of deaths in the east of Ukraine, trade still goes on with Ukraine’s aggressive neighbor to the north and east.
Even after Russian imports dropped by 12.3 percent in January 2019, trade with Russia still amounted 15 percent of Ukraine’s overall trade, or $607.2 million, according to the State Statistics Service.
The same trend was seen in exports – they fell by 14.9 percent to $224.6 million, but still made up a 5.5 percent share.
Different numbers
But surprisingly, the country’s trade balance wasn’t positive at all going by the figures used by the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine, according to Ukrainian online financial news website Minfin.
It reported on Feb. 8 that according to State Fiscal Service data, Ukraine had actually run a trade deficit of $80 million in January.
While the number for exports was the same, that of imports was different – $4.146 billion.
However, this could have been caused by possible discrepancies in the data of the State Statistics Service, the State Fiscal Service and the National Bank of Ukraine, and their use of different methodologies for calculating the balance of trade, according to Svitlana Obedinikova, the State Statistics Service’s press spokesperson.
