Economic Relations of Ukraine and its neighborhood countries and economic consolidations

Table of Content

Overview

As dominant factors in the development of international relations at the current stage, global integrative processes also impact on the evolution of trade and economic relations between individual countries. The nature of the impact depends, first of all, on the place of one or another country in the global integrative processes as well as on the specifics of the interrelationship between them in the past and what they can be in the future. As regards Ukrainian economic relations, it can be argued with sufficient reliability that the impact of the first factor will be negligible, because so far this country has a low level of integration into the world economy. This is confirmed, in particular, by the following observations: according to the theory of international economic integration, countries are divided into large and small ones. The underlying criterion of this division is not so much the size of a country and its population as its influence in the world economy and, specifically, in international trade. This actually determines the level of a country’s global integration. One of the indicators that is taken into consideration in this case is the country’s share in world exports

Although by its area and population Ukraine is one of the largest countries in Europe, its share in world exports is a negligible 0.3 %, which means that, first, its impact on world economic processes is practically zero and, second, it has not yet integrated sufficiently enough into the globalized world economy. For this reason we believe that Ukraine has no sufficiently objective levers or factors of economic influence on the international relationship as a whole. Ukrainian economic relations are to the largest degree affected by the second factor — the high economic interdependence from economic development of the world. The former USSR actually achieved the highest known level of integration based on what was called the single national economic complex. This is confirmed by the following facts: by different estimates, the Ukrainian SSR manufactured only 20—30 % of products in a closed cycle. The remaining 70—80 % were either parts of products assembled at enterprises in other republics, or else finished products made of parts mostly delivered from other Soviet republics. That’s why the main goal of the work is to describe economic Relations of Ukraine and its neighborhood countries and disclose the ways of economic consolidations with European countries and countries of the former USSR.

Summary

Coming to conclusion it should be stressed that Ukraine today is to improve its economic and political relations with neighbouring countries. For example in political sphere Ukraine should take into account the specific features of different nations with whom Ukraine is to establish contacts; strategic partnership between the countries should receive necessary real conceptual and institutional base. In the economic sphere: in order to ensure better implementation of the economic potential, it is necessary to eliminate technical problems, to intensify the process of FTA launching on mutually acceptable conditions, to ensure more active lobbying of the Ukrainian interests within energy projects. In the social sphere the main task is to rise the standard of living for people who are the representative of so-called budget sphere. In the security sector: Ukraine must coordinate its actions the issue must be a corner stone of strategic partnership. Some progress in the area of military-technological cooperation with European countries has been already achieved; today Ukraine is paying attention to non-military security issues, exchanging data on developing atomic energy etc.

On the whole the modern foreign economic policy of Ukraine is focused on forming of the new trade regime with further integration into world economic space by the gradual openness of national economy and business sphere. Ukraine now is implementing following steps:

- supporting of national commodity producers by the use of possibilities of international-legal mechanism of protection of their interests at the world market;

- acceleration of economic reforms by harmonization of economic legislation in accordance with the world system of trade;

- overcoming of technical barriers in trading with countries the members of WTO (USA, EU);

- expansion of borders of trade, that provides the receipt of currency, stimulates development and technical updating of industry, assists deepening of productive co-operation, provides the substantial increase of foreign investments.