According to the State Customs Service of Ukraine, imports of fresh and chilled pork meat totaled 6.6 thousand tons worth $ 11.9 million in January. Thus, the first month, domestic importers exhausted almost a third of the annual quotas for duty-free imports of pork from the EU, ProAgro Group reported, citing the Association of Ukrainian pork producers.
The brisk import activity is caused in particular by the beginning of the “new countdown” of quotas for duty-free import of pork. Thus, at the end of the third and fourth quarter of 2021, when the corresponding quotas were exhausted, importers were required to pay 10% duty on imported frozen and 12% duty on imported chilled pork. Since the beginning of the year, domestic importers can enjoy such “benefits” again.
On the other hand, given the rate of pork imports from abroad, these quotas will be exhausted much earlier this year. Thus, in the first month of the year they were exhausted by 32%. Therefore, if the import activity remains at the same level, from April such supplies may automatically go up by 10-12% for domestic traders.
Denmark (48% of imported pork) continues to hold leading positions among the main supplier countries. However, the second and third places are now occupied by the Netherlands (16.7%) and Belgium (14.4%), while Poland, which was second on the list in 2021, dropped to fourth place (10.9%) due to the worsening situation with African swine fever.
