Development and the possibilities of protection of Ukraine's meat livestock breeding under the conditions of WTO

The article analyzes the impact of Ukraine's accession to WTO on the development of this country's meat livestock breeding. Taking into account the restrictions as to the state support of meat livestock breeding with measures of the WTO ""yellow box"", there are recommendations have been developed on the use of various ""green box"" measures to support the domestic producers. It is established that the protection level of the domestic beef market, after Ukraine's accession to WTO, considerably declined due to the following reasons: (1) decreased rate of import duty to 15%; (2) transition to ad valorem duty rate, which is less efficient to protect domestic producers during the most vulnerable for them periods of price decline on the world markets; (3) abandonment of differentiated rates of the duty tariff in the commodity groups of fresh, cooled and frozen beef, which used to protect Ukraine's domestic market from imports of cheap low quality raw meat. The article shows, that the negative impact of decline of the level of tariff protection on the development of the meat livestock breeding sector was partly mitigated by the greater decrease in the rates of import duty On the competing produce of pork and poultry/ As a result, the imports of the above mentioned meat types, after Ukraine's accession to WTO, grew much more rapidly. A comparative analysis of the levels of tariff protection of meat livestock breeding in the countries, which are net importers of beef, and those having their own meat livestock breeding shows an asymmetry in the tariff protection Ukraine's beef market and that of those countries, which consists in: (1) a lower rate of import duty in Ukraine; (2) lack of the possibility to use specific, mixed or combined tariffs; (3) lack of the possibility to vary the level of import duty by tariff lines within a commodity group; (4) lack of the possibility to quote imports. All that causes the need of constant monitoring of the beef market in order to reveal threats to domestic producers due to the growth of imports and timely use of WTO's special mechanisms, such as protective, anti-dumping or compensatory ones.