Shmygal’s government “delivered a verdict” on the agricultural industry, - media

Due to the inaction of the government in negotiations with neighboring countries that blocked the export of domestic food and the European Union, the future of the Ukrainian agricultural sector is in jeopardy. All decisions on further bans and restrictions are made without the participation of Ukraine, and the replacement of national decisions on import bans and restricted transit with an EU-level decision only exacerbates the situation for Ukrainian farmers. This is stated in the material on the site Censor.net.

According to media reports, by May 2, Poland must abandon the ban on the import of dozens of food products from Ukraine and replace it with a decision of the European Commission, namely, an embargo on four goods - wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower seeds. Earlier, Kyiv protested to Poland and the EU due to the imposition of restrictions contrary to the Association Agreement. Prior to this, Brussels and the countries that spoke out against the import of Ukrainian food reached a compromise to ban the import of a number of Ukrainian agricultural products.

“For Ukraine, what the Polish media call a “compromise between the European Commission and Poland” means the actual cessation of supplies of key agricultural products to the European market, which, in the conditions of the shaky and uncertain functioning of the sea grain corridor, is actually a death sentence for the agricultural industry,” – say the authors of the article.

“Part of the production that will not be sold will have to be destroyed or it will disappear on its own. In the conditions of a rapid fall in the GDP of a country struggling with unprovoked aggression, a blow to the main source of foreign exchange earnings - the agricultural sector - is actually a diversion against the entire economy. The devaluation of the national currency, the loss of jobs and tax revenues is just the tip of this iceberg, which Shmihal and his team are leading Ukraine to,” - the material says.

“The government does not seem to have made much effort to resolve the issue of the embargo. Ukraine did not declare its position and did not insist on resolving the issue of agricultural imports in the interests of its producers. Meanwhile, the government says that the potential of Ukrainian exports from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024 will be more than 40 million tons of grain. How to take out such a volume of food if the agreements reached in Brussels come into force?” - asks the author.

In his opinion, no steps have been taken in the Ukrainian government to really return the situation to a reasonable course. “to direct negotiations towards the national interests of Ukraine, which is under Russian shelling and in this difficult time is also forced to lose export markets in friendly countries.”

“In the end, all this can result in further restrictions for Ukraine on imports to the EU of goods produced by us, not only food, but also industrial group. “If similar bans are repeated in other states, this could set a dangerous precedent for EU member states to make other independent decisions based on their national needs. Today it is grain and agriculture, tomorrow it may be a more complex topic,” - speaks lawyer Andrey Tereshchuk in the comment

“The government of Poland will primarily take care of the interests of the Poles, the government of Slovakia - of the interests of the Slovaks, and even the Hungarian government will take care of the interests of the Hungarians. For some reason, it seems to me that the Ukrainian government did not calculate this problem in a timely manner,” - speaks agricultural market expert Mikhail Apostol.

As the media wrote earlier, unfortunately, Ukraine did not use a number of “trump cards” in the negotiations, including the explanation that exports from Ukraine are important, because it allows the country to survive during a full-scale aggression from Russia, and the more the Ukrainian economy earns, the less it requires external injections from partners.