In 2020, Asia became the record holder for the consumption of Ukrainian products. The previous record lasted nine years. And last year, domestic exporters surpassed it by $0.92 billion.
The share of Asian exports in the supply of Ukrainian goods abroad is also a record over the past ten years. At the end of 2020, it reached 37.5%. The indicator increased immediately by 2.5%.
Last year, the biggest surprise in the Asian food segment was the start of massive grain exports from Ukraine to Pakistan. Over the year, 1.25 million tons of Ukrainian grain was brought here at once (there were practically no supplies a year earlier). India remains the leading consumer of our sunflower oil in Asia. In 2020, she bought more than 1.9 million tons of Ukrainian oil. Although the most actively increasing the volume of its imports are Iraq and Turkey.
For nine months of 2021, the trade turnover in agri-food products between Ukraine and Asia increased against last year's indicators for the corresponding period by 20%, reaching $10 billion. Over the past five years, Ukraine has been paving the way for diversifying its foreign trade.
At the beginning of 2021, Turkey, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq (China — out of competition) formed the top 5 importers of Ukrainian products by customs value among Asian countries. In 2020, they together imported goods worth $6.47 billion from Ukraine.
On the eve of the New Year holidays, December also recorded a record monthly export volume in 2020. Over the last month of the year, goods worth $4.88 billion were exported, 18.5% more than in 2019. And by the end of the year, demand soared abroad not for consumer goods but industrial goods — our iron ore concentrates and pellets, sunflower oil and corn, and the like.
