Beef imports to Ukraine increase, and pork imports decrease
In accordance with statistics from Ukrainian State Customs Service over four months of 2020 meat imports into the country were 35.1% (or 26.6 thousand Mt) down y-o-y to 49.2 thousand Mt valuated at $37.3 million. Meat imports share made 47.1% of overall imports of trade group under HS code 0202. Chilled beef imports were 3.3 times up to 0.16 thousand Mt; frozen beef imports were 4.3% y-o-y to 0.34 thousand Mt.
While BVM imports were 5.3% down to 9.5 thousand Mt, pork imports shank 61.6% to 3.5 thousand Mt, pork fat imports reduced by 40.3% to 9.6 thousand Mt.
Pork imports into Ukraine reduced drastically against the same time in last year even though pork production in the country has been shrinking due to the ASF cases as well as due to pandemic COVID-19 and imposed quarantine. From 2012 through April 2020 there were registered 518 cases of ASF disease and fighting against the ASF is high-priority task of the Ukrainian hog production industry.