Domestic Support of Livestock Production in Ukraine

Livestock plays an important role in food supplying. However, this industry is today in Ukraine in a difficult situation. A gradual reduction of livestock numbers affected both the output and the changes in the structure and range of livestock production. In recent years, there has been a tendency to a reduction of meat and milk consumption in the Ukraine’s domestic market due to the low purchasing power of individuals, which therefore causes difficulties for the country’s food security. In the structure of livestock production in Ukraine, the dominant place belongs to farms. However, small-scale production is not able to provide high quality products and volumes necessary to meet domestic demand. With significant available resources of Ukraine, the country instead of exporting the livestock products has become an importer. The Ukrainian allocations to supporting the livestock production are quite significant, due to budgetary payments and subsidies or rebates in the value added tax (VAT). However, this does not significantly influence either the output or the performance indicators of improvement in the livestock production. All this testifies to the imperfection of mechanism of state support for the livestock production in Ukraine. The global financial crisis has reduced the financial capacity of the state support for the livestock industry. Therefore, under these conditions, there is an urgent need of an efficient use of budgetary resources and of an improvement of the mechanism of support for the livestock production in Ukraine.