Only two out of six existing starch factories in Ukraine are operating - PMP Vimal and Krokhmaloprodukty Orane LLC, while the rest are in a pre-default state or are completely bankrupt. This was announced by the director of "Vimal" Sergei Samonenko during a press conference in "Interfax-Ukraine".
According to him, the standing enterprises have huge unrealized warehouse stocks of products manufactured in 2019-2020 MY.
“In the period from 2017 to 2020, imports from Belarus increased almost 10 times - from 877 tons to 7100 tons. Part of the imported products in Ukraine reached 50%. It is 30% cheaper than Ukrainian goods. We are losing in the dumping war because of the high production costs and purchase prices for raw materials, ”he said the reason for this situation in the industry.
According to him, the situation is even worse in the segment of dried potato flakes (mashed potatoes), since all of the three existing lines for the production of mashed potatoes stopped working.
“Ukraine imports 100% of these products from abroad,” Samonenko said.
According to him, neighboring states, in particular the Russian Federation, Belarus and the EU countries, have state programs to support the potato growing industry, within the framework of which producers are compensated for interest on loans, the cost of purchasing equipment, irrigation, seeds, and there are regional programs to stimulate the development of potato growing and construction. processing enterprises.
The director of "Vimala" believes that the state program to support industrial potato growing in Ukraine will be ineffective without solving the issue of import of goods made from potatoes in Belarus and re-exported from its territory.
“After the Russian Federation unilaterally withdrew from the free trade regime (FTZ) on January 1, 2017, and Ukraine retained a free trade agreement with Belarus, the role of Belarus in the international market changed dramatically: it turned into a platform for industrial trade aggression and re-export to Ukraine of goods from the Russian Federation. This applies not only to potatoes and products made from them, but also to a number of other food products, ”Samonenko said.
Possible solutions to problems, in his opinion, is the development of a mechanism to protect the internal market of Ukraine from the penetration of starch and potato products from Belarus, for example, by excluding these commodity items from the free trade regime. Also, the director of "Vimala" proposed to focus on increasing the quota for duty-free import into the EU of groups of "sensitive goods" under the FTZ.
It is noted that the annual internal demand of Ukraine for potato starch is 16 thousand tons, in 2019-2020 MY Ukrainian enterprises produced 8,4 thousand tons of potato starch, a third of which has not yet been sold.