Minister Petrashko outlines measures to support domestic producers

The Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture of Ukraine plans to support domestic producers by improving the public procurement system.

“Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture of Ukraine Ihor Petrashko noted that now state institutions and enterprises have an opportunity to apply non-price criteria for evaluating tender offers when making purchases, in particular, to establish such criteria as availability of own production facilities, use of local resources, environmental characteristics. However, currently, these criteria are advisory and, unfortunately, are not always used by customers,” the Ministry’s press service informs.

“We need to work to make non-price criteria, which allow Ukrainian producers to gain an advantage, mandatory. At the same time, we should not forget that Ukraine signed the Association Agreement with the EU and received many preferences. Therefore, our position must be responsible and balanced. But there is a step towards a compromise," Petrashko said.

He also said that support for domestic producers, so-called protectionism, has intensified in the world amid the coronavirus pandemic. In such circumstances, Ukraine must also take effective and adequate measures to protect its domestic producers.

“In G20 countries, the number of anti-dumping investigations to protect their producers has almost doubled. That is, we see a trend that countries start to defend themselves more actively. That is why we are also moving in this direction as the number of investigations we are currently conducting has also increased significantly,” the minister commented.

To date, Ukraine applies 28 trade defense measures (including 25 anti-dumping and 3 special measures) in regard to the imports of goods with a potential value of over UAH 16.7 billion.

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