Opportunities and Threats from Ukrainian Membership in WTO in Foreign Trade for Meat and Milk Products with EU Countries and Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia

The article considers the problem of consequences of Ukrainian membership in World Trade Organisation (WTO) in foreign trade of meat and milk products with EU countries and Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia (CU). The article shows that meat and milk products are one of the main export agricultural commodities of the country. It analyses the structure of export of agro-industrial products from Ukraine. It studies situation and changes that took place in the market of meat and meat processing products in Ukraine after its membership in WTO. It shows that Ukrainian export of meat products mainly consists of products with low added value, while products with high added value are imported to Ukraine. It also shows that due to liberalisation of customs rules and the system of trade allocation in the world market of meat and meat products the internal market of Ukraine became unprotected from imported products, which resulted in significant increase of cheaper import into Ukraine and uncompetitiveness of domestic producers of meat products. The article studies situations and shifts that took place in the market of milk and milk products in the result of Ukrainian WTO membership. It proves that the CU market stays, in the middle-term prospect, the most powerful for domestic producers of milk products. It shows that standards of milk quality, applied in EU countries, are higher than in Ukraine and CU, which means it is impossible to compete with EU high technology production. It holds that milk quality increase pursuant to EU standards requires additional investments into re-equipment of the production technology.