By the end of 2016, Ukraine imported grain seeds and oilseeds for a total of $350 million, which is 20 times higher than last year”s volume of Ukrainian exports of seed.
It has been reported by Institute of Agrarian Economics (IAE).
According to Alexander Zakharchuk, head of the material and technical resources of IAE, Ukraine imported mainly sunflower, corn, rapeseed, soybean and rye seeds last year, which account for more than 99% of the total imported seeds to Ukraine.
In particular, about 60% or $206 million was share of sunflower seeds, bought in the USA, Turkey, France and Spain. Almost a third of the total purchase of seed material ($114.7 million) was spent on the purchase of corn seeds from Romania, Poland and France.
Rape was purchased last year at amount of $22.2 million. The main suppliers of products were Germany and France. Seeds of soy were imported from Canada and the Czech Republic ($3.5 million). Rye was supplied from Denmark, Germany and Poland ($0.9 million).
It has been also reported that in 2016, Ukraine imported 33.2 KMT of grain seeds, of which about 95% or 31.4 KMT were corn seeds.
Import of oilseeds was at the level of 32.9 KMT. More than 73% of them (24.2 KMT) were sunflower seeds. It is noted that this is the highest volume of imports of sunflower seeds over the past five years.
“In 2016, there was a tendency to reduce the import of seed material in Ukraine compared to the pre-crisis year of 2013. The reason for this was a sharp decline in demand due to the devaluation of the national currency, military actions in the east and localization of seed production of foreign companies in Ukraine “, – summed up Alexander Zakharchuk.
