Meat imports in the first quarter of 2018 hit the highest over the past 5 years — Pankratov

The first three months of the year 2018 demonstrated the increase in meat imports of all positions. Moreover, meat import volumes for the first quarter turned out to be the largest for the past five years, as for pork — for four years.

This was informed by Andrey Pankratov, agricultural markets analyst and a national consultant at FAO.

The volumes of imported meat are as follows:

• pork — 1.8 thou. tons (+17% as compared with Q1 2017);
• poultry meat — 30.8 thou. tons (+26%);
• offal — 8.4 thou. tons (+44%);
• lard — 14.1 thou. tons (+58%).

"These are our basic import positions. Import of beef is insignificant, imports of other types of meat are almost absent," the expert said.

According to Andrey Pankratov, last year's rise in price of meat in the domestic market contributed to increased imports.

"This happened in the second half of last year, but even now these "doors" are still open. The fluctuations of Ukrainian and European prices were insignificant since the end of 2017 to change the situation. Only in March, prices in the EU went up, however, at the same time, the hryvnia strengthened and imports were still possible," he stressed.

Reference: for the first quarter of 2018, the volume of imports of fresh, chilled and frozen pork was 3 times higher than the volume of its external supplies.