scholarly journals Possibilities for Integration of the Eastern Partnership Countries’ Export into the EU Markets

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-39
Author(s):  
Jolanta Rauluskeviciene ◽  
Daiva Makuteniene

To implement the Eastern Partnership (EaP) framework launched in 2009, the EU seeks to bring its Eastern neighbours – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – closer to the European standards, promote regional relations with these countries, ensure sustainable growth of their economy, cooperate in trade area for the countries of the Eastern Partnership to become economically stronger, European countries, part of the European markets and structures. It is important for the EU that the countries neighbouring with its Eastern boarders are stable and their economies continue to develop. One of the ways to promote economic growth of a country or region is to develop its export. Geographical proximity of the markets provides the opportunity for the EaP countries to increase trade with the EU, thus creating the conditions for economic growth. The research was aimed at evaluating the possibilities for integration of the EaP countries’ export into the EU markets by identifying characteristic features of the countries’ export structure and their comparative advantages in trade with the EU. The article presents extensive analysis of export of six EaP countries, characteristic features of product specialization are identified, and comparative advantages of production by these countries and their effectiveness are identified. No similar studies have been carried out in a common context of the EaP countries till now. Export concentration (diversification), export structure similarity, the revealed comparative advantage and Lafay indices have been measured with the view towards the aim of the research. Empirical study of the export structure and comparative advantages of the EaP countries has been carried out using statistical data for the period 2005–2012 provided by Trade Map database, classification of products into product groups under the Combined Nomenclature. The results of the research have shown that current integration of the EaP countries’ export into the markets of the EU countries is not favourable enough for the countries due to irrationality of their export structure and low level of export diversification. Only Moldova’s variety of the exported products was deeper, broader and closer to the export by the EU. The results of the analysis of comparative advantages have shown that the set of product groups having comparative advantage in the export by the EaP countries to the EU is rather wide, such products have already occupied the EU markets niche, which could lead to more effective leverage of the export potential and, at the same time, create preconditions for economic growth of these countries and their export integration into the EU markets.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Olefir ◽  

The benefits and costs of the implementation of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) between Ukraine and the EU have been studied. The study aimed to find out to what extent the implementation of DCFTA has helped increase exports and attract foreign direct investment into Ukraine’s economy. A comparison method was used to conduct the study. The period of implementation of the DCFTA (2016-2020) was compared with the period before the implementation of the DCFTA (2010- 2014). Due to trade liberalization, exports of Ukrainian goods to the EU and imports of goods from the EU to Ukraine have increased. Trade liberalization has not contributed to further attracting foreign direct investment from the EU to Ukraine’s economy. The urgent task of the Government of Ukraine is to create a business regulatory environment according to European standards and protect foreign investment.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-31
Author(s):  
Xénia Szanyi-Gyenes ◽  
György Mudri ◽  
Mária Bakosné Böröcz

The role of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is unquestionable in the European economies, while financial opportunities are still inadequate for them. The more than 20 million SMEs play a significant role in European economic growth, innovation and job creation. According to the latest EC Annual Report , SMEs are accounting for 99% of all non-financial enterprises, employing 88.8 million people and generating almost EUR 3.7 tn in added value for our economy. Despite the fact that there is plenty of EU funding available for these SMEs, for certain reasons these funds hardly reach them. But we have to see that the EU supports SMEs by various way, e.g. by grants, regulatory changes, financial instrument, direct funds. On the other hand, SMEs and decision makers realised that the environmental sustainability has to be attached to the economic growth, therefore more and more tools are available for these enterprises. Over the last few years, public institutions, the market, the financial community and non-governmental associations have explicitly demanded that firms improve their environmental performance. One of the greatest opportunities might lay in the Climate- and Energy Strategy till 2030 as 20% of the EU budget is allocated to climate-related actions, however the easy access to finance is still a key question. Does the EU recognise the actual difficulties? Is there a systemic reason behind the absorption problems? Is the EU creating a more businessfriendly environment for SMEs, facilitating access to finance, stimulates the green and sustainable growth and improving access to new markets? The paper analyses the current European situation of the SMEs and the effectiveness of some new tools, which are specially targeting SMEs. JEL classification: Q18


2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (No. 2) ◽  
pp. 51-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bojnec Stefan ◽  
Ferto Imre

The article investigates the duration of comparative advantage indices in the European Union (EU-27) agri-food exports using the normalised revealed comparative advantage index on the global market. There is employed both a descriptive analysis of the duration of comparative advantage, and examined the major drivers using discrete-time duration models with proper controls for unobserved heterogeneity. The robustness of the models is tested with alternative estimation procedures and sub-samples. Estimations show that the comparative advantages for most agri-food products survived for a certain number of years, but a high percentage of them have a shorter duration. Larger trade costs decrease the probability of survival in comparative advantages, while the level of economic development, the size of the country, the agri-food export diversification, and being a new EU member state increases it. Implications for the EU-27 member states and agri-food policies are suggested in the conclusion.


2009 ◽  
Vol 55 (No. 8) ◽  
pp. 375-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Qineti ◽  
M. Rajcaniova ◽  
E. Matejkova

The paper investigates comparative advantages and competitiveness of Slovak and the EU 27 agri-food trade in markets of two countries: Russia and Ukraine. Our aim is to see the dynamics of the agri-food trade for the analyzed countries especially in the post-accession period. Applying a trade dataset from the EUROSTAT and based on the approach applied by Bojnec and Fertő (2006), we describe the pattern of agri-food trade in Slovakia and the EU using the Balassa index. The extent of trade specialization exhibits a declining trend in the country. It has lost comparative advantage for a number of product groups over time. The indices of specialization have tended to converge. For the particular product groups, the indices display a greater variation. They are stable for the product groups with comparative disadvantage, but the product groups with strong comparative advantage show a significant variation. There are also shown different tendencies for different markets i.e. the trade patterns between the Slovak Republic and the EU 27 with Russia and Ukraine.


Author(s):  
Gurpreet Kaur

This chapter analyzes the export competitiveness of India against BIMSTEC countries. To identify the comparative advantage/disadvantage of India's exports with BIMSTEC countries, revealed comparative advantage (RCA) approach is used at HS 6-digit. It provides an understanding of challenges and opportunities that India's export sector faces as it becomes rapidly integrated into global markets. The study identifies those export categories in which India loses, gains, or maintains its comparative advantage with following the stages of comparative advantages. The study concludes that India's export sectors witnessed competitive positioning of some of its product, and these trends have not been uniform across all Industries. Rapid export growth of some sector does not imply that the sector is displaying high demand growth in BIMSTEC markets. In an ideal situation, there would be the emergence of an export structure that has a heavy concentration in those industries that exhibit high growth in the BIMSTEC market.


Author(s):  
Lalit Mohan Kathuria

PurposeManufacturing sector plays a vital role in the economy of developing countries like India. The Indian textiles and clothing industry has an overwhelming presence in the economic life of the country. The readymade garment segment contributes 42 per cent of the Indian textiles exports, which include cotton garments and accessories, manmade fiber garments and other textiles clothing. The overall export basket of India has increased from 13.6 per cent in 2014-15 to 15 per cent in 2015-16 for textiles and apparel products including handicrafts. Though clothing exports from India have witnessed high growth rates in the past decade as compared to other commodity exports, India’s performance, when compared to many competing countries, has not been much encouraging. India has lagged behind in clothing exports as compared to China, Bangladesh and Vietnam. This study mainly focused on analyzing the changing clothing export structure of select countries such as India, China, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Turkey by using revealed comparative advantage indices.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses different variants of revealed comparative advantage indices, namely, Balassa’s RCA Index (Balassa, 1965), Dynamic RCA index (Kreinin and Plummer, 1994) and Revealed Symmetrical Comparative Advantage Index (Laursen, 1998). Indices were calculated for the period 2003 and 2013 under knitted category (HS 61) and not knitted category (HS 62) up to four-digit classification. Spearman rank correlation was applied for analyzing changes during the period under study. For calculation of RCA and dynamic RCA indices, the export data have been taken from UN Comtrade, an electronic database of United Nation and International Trade Statistics database of World Trade Organization.FindingsThe results highlighted that India ranks at the bottom in seven HS 61 clothing products and fourth in five HS 61 products. Bangladesh stands at the top in 11 of the HS 61 clothing products among selected countries. Similarly, Vietnam has also gained stronghold position in the global clothing trade. In many of these products, Bangladesh has higher revealed comparative advantage as compared to other countries. In HS 62 product category, India was at the bottom in eight products, whereas Bangladesh has gained the most in nine products on the comparative advantage basis. The findings highlighted the shift taking place in global clothing trade structure as trade was shifting toward low-cost countries such as Vietnam and Bangladesh. Surprisingly, India has foregone strategic advantage in many value-added products to low-cost countries such as Bangladesh and Vietnam.Originality/valueThis is one of the few studies undertaken to analyze comparative advantages of leading clothing exporter countries (mainly from Asian region) in the recent times. Findings depict changing export structure and dynamics of clothing exports in the region. Findings would help government, industry associations and policymakers in enhancing sector competitiveness and in identifying the growth products.


2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.K.M. Nurul Hossain ◽  
Mohammad Abdul Munim Joarder

Purpose – The authors considered three regional trading agreements (RTAs): European Union (EU-25), ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), and South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) to test the hypothesis that poor members within a RTA catch rich members and thereby follow the path of income convergence. Of particular interest is to test whether partial openness (i.e. formation of RTAs) or openness or political conditions are conducive to economic growth among the member countries of RTAs. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The authors used pooled datasets from three different RTAs, namely the EU-25, the AFTA, and the SAFTA. Taking five years average for all variables, starting from 1961 to 1965 and extending to 2001-2005, the authors tested the hypothesis that the growth rate of per capita GDP is negatively related to the initial level of per capita GDP. Constructing a dynamic behavioral equation and forming the reduced form equation, the authors calculated the s-convergence, and both conditional and unconditional convergence. Findings – The authors found that both the EU-25 and the AFTA exhibit s-convergence, and both conditional and unconditional convergence, while the reverse evidence was observed in the case of the SAFTA. However, the speed of convergence of the AFTA was found to be much higher than that of the EU-25. Originality/value – Formation of RTA by countries should be considered as an essential condition to achieve sustained economic growth. In addition, political rights, trade openness, and more importantly benevolence of the member countries within the RTA must be shown to sustain economic growth and convergence; otherwise with the passage of time, divergence among the RTA members will be evident.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17(32) (4) ◽  
pp. 271-279
Author(s):  
Anna Rytko

The themes of the impact of foreign trade on economic growth has been repeatedly assumed by investigators and were most often related to various aspects: the openness of the economies, economic prosperity, competitiveness and diversification of export. The objective of the research was the evaluation of changes in economic development and the development of foreign trade in Poland comparing them with the EU and some EU countries. Particular attention was given to the issue of diversification and competitiveness of exports by putting the hypothesis that the greater product diversification of Polish export, the greater its competitiveness, which leads to economic growth. The work uses the following test methods: descriptive methods, statistical methods, the indexing methods of which Indicator of the Absolute Deviations and Revealed Comparative Advantages were calculated. Export diversification can lead to speeding up the pace of economic growth. By analyzing in detail the situations in Poland can conclude that it is advisable to diversify of the export structure.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17(32) (4) ◽  
pp. 236-248
Author(s):  
Karolina Pawlak

The aim of the paper was to examine the evolution of the importance and comparative advantages of the EU and US agri-food sector in world trade in 1995-2015. The research is based on data from UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) resources. The following indicators were used in the comparative advantage analysis: Balassa’s Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA), Vollrath’s Revealed Competitiveness (RC), the Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantage (RSCA), and the Lafay’s Trade Balance Index (TBI). In 1995-2015, the EU countries and the US were the largest players of world trade in agri-food products. The EU countries held comparative advantages in the global market as regards exports of products of animal origin whereas the exports of cereals, preparations of cereals, oilseeds and oleaginous fruits and meat products were the source of revealed comparative advantages for the US. Both the EU countries and the US reached high comparative advantages in trade in those assortment groups which corresponded to their highest shares in global exports and generated a high, consistently increasing positive trade balance. Therefore, their comparative advantages were the source of their favourable export specialisation profile, which is consistent with the classical comparative costs principle.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-93
Author(s):  
Hanna Bazhenova

May 2019 marked the 10th anniversary of the launch of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership initiative, which encourages democratic reforms in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine and the strengthening of the relations and cooperation between these countries and the EU. During this period, significant results were achieved in terms of political association, economic relations and regulatory convergence. Thanks to this initiative, Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine signed association and free trade area agreements (DCFTAs) and achieved visa-free travel. One of the main drawbacks of the programme at this stage is that it does not provide for a differentiated approach towards partner countries and deeper cooperation with those already signatory to Association Agreements. The anniversary of the Eastern Partnership encourages to take stock of the results of the initiative and identify perspectives for its further development. The aim of this article is to identify the main achievements of the Eastern Partnership from the perspective of Ukraine’s priorities and interests, as well as to propose a new effective model of relations between Ukraine and other partner countries with the EU under this initiative. The text sets out and analyses the main stages of the cooperation between Ukraine and the EU in the years 1991–2019, especially the participation of Ukraine in the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Eastern Partnership. The article shows that the Eastern Partnership policy and its implementation mechanisms need a structural review and differentiated, individual approaches that would meet the needs, expectations and interests of all the parties. If the EU intends to continue building mutually beneficial relations with its eastern neighbours, it should not only maintain the existing initiative, but also adapt it effectively to the challenges of the present. The EU should therefore develop a sufficiently attractive and effective model of cooperation to support pro-European reforms in its partner countries.


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