Magazine: Upward trend in our agricultural trade with Russia

In February 2013 Hungary’s Minister of Rural Development opened the Prodexpo 2013 food trade fair in Moscow. In Hungary at the 2013 OMÉK (National Agriculture and Food Exhibition) Russia was the special guest. In the middle of last year Paprika opened in Moscow: the shop sells Hungarian groceries and the plan is to open 10-15 more stores around Russia. MAGNIT, the biggest Russian retail chain intends to build a logistics centre in East Hungary, the new terminal would create 1,500 jobs in the Záhony region. All of the above developments show the strengthening of the agri-food relationship between the two countries. Our 10-month export average was up 22 percent last year. While Hungary’s agricultural export is almost stagnating, in 2013 Russia was one of our most dynamically developing markets, and thanks to the low level of import this relation produced the biggest foreign trade surplus in our agri-food trade. Both parties consider the future to be promising. According to Russia’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture, their market could take up 2-3 times more agricultural and food products from Hungary if we could produce high quality goods. Although 83-84 percent of Hungary’s food export goes to the single market of the European Union, Russia is our most important and fastest developing non-EU market. What is more, the majority of products we sell there are processed goods with much bigger added value than for instance cereal crops. Our export to Russia grew above the average in both 2012 and 2013. Agricultural export increased its share in our national export to Russia from 7.9 percent in 2012 to 8.4 percent in 2013. If we take a closer look on how our agri-food export to Russia developed in 2012-2013, we can see that the level of expansion was 22 percent (in 2011-2012 it was 11 percent). We tripled our sugar export, doubled our oily seed export and exported more than 1.5 times more meat and slaughter by-products. Hungary also sold more food industry by-product, ready-made food, vegetable and livestock in the Russian market. Our pork export surged from 3,000 to 12,000 tons in the first ten months of last year and in value it reached EUR 33 million. Our poultry meat export neared 7,000 tons and surpassed EUR 10 million in value, augmenting by 43 percent. In the long run Hungary’s interest is moving beyond the level of direct trade relations into the realm of technology and knowledge transfer in the field of agriculture. This would also include the exporting of Hungarian propagation material and the related know-how.