February 10 2005, 14:22 APK-Inform

AP ministry supports idea of meat imports quoting

Agrarian Policy Ministry of Ukraine supports the idea of quoting imports of meat to the country, the Minister Olexandr Baranivsky told reporters after his meeting with representatives of poultry breeding industry February 10.

"There is plenty of meat today coming to Ukraine illegally or through free economic zones. It hurts the Ukrainian producer very hard", Baranivsky said.

He said the ministry was now preparing the necessary documents for starting-up the mechanism of meat imports quoting. The quotas are supposed to be sold and the collected money to become a budget revenue. They might also be directed to development of local poultry breeding.

However, the minister said, the issue should be approached with a great care.

"We must not pose our market under risk… Lest the situation should turn out like that: we are imposing some limitations and tomorrow - there is a product shortage on the market", he said.

The meeting participants said that individual quotas were going to be introduced in the three kinds of meat products: beef, pork and poultry meat.

According to Agrarian Policy Ministry's data, import of meat to Ukraine in 2004 increased significantly - to 360,000 tonnes from 123,000 tonnes in 2003.

In mid-2004 Agrarian Policy Ministry already made an attempt to introduce quoting of meet imports, but the issue then remained unresolved.