OREANDA-NEWS. February 04, 2010. President Victor Yushchenko wrote a letter to Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in which he drew the Government’s attention to problems in foreign trade, particularly ensuring favorable conditions for access of Ukrainian goods to foreign markets and protect Ukrainian producers’ interests at domestic market.

The President said that he is worried about increasing number of antidumping investigations against Ukrainian producers – more than 7 times in 2008-2009 compared to 2007. Moreover, he disproved the Government’s information that in 2006-2009 positive results were achieved in ending antidumping investigations against Ukrainian producers without the use of restrictive measures on Ukrainian products, saying that the analysis of these processes shows that most of these investigations were ceased due to procedural, financial and economic factors in countries-importers of Ukrainian products, rather than due to measures taken by the Government.

The President also stressed that the issue of access of Ukrainian metal pipes to the Russian market still remains unresolved. According to the Protocol signed between the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine and the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation in the first quarter of 2010 the quota on imports of Ukrainian pipes to Russia amounts to 55 thousand tons, which is almost twice less than in 2005-2009, and four times less than traditional amounts. Victor Yushchenko also said that he does not see clear answer to why did the Government connected the issue of presence of Ukrainian pipes on Russian market with restrictions on imports of Russian chemical industry products to Ukraine, lifting the restrictions and thus causing losses to the Ukrainian producers of similar goods.

The President of Ukraine requested the Prime Minister to take effective measures to resolve the issue of maintaining the presence of Ukrainian goods on foreign markets, particularly goods with high added value, and conduct systematic purposeful work to protect Ukraine's domestic market from unfair imports in full conformity with anti-dumping legislation of Ukraine and the rules defined by the World Trade Organization.