Agricultural market of post-Soviet countries and its comparison with selected group of countries

Annotation: Agricultural trade is growing within and also between individual regional markets. An example of such a trend is evident in the Commonwealth of Independent States. A special position of agriculture is the main reason for limited trade cooperation among the countries. None of the countries want to lose its self-sufficiency and control over its agriculture and foodstuff market. During the nineties, former Soviet Union countries lost a significant portion of their agriculture and foodstuff production capacities. The result was a significant reduction in export and massive growth of imports. The low level of self-sufficiency as well as the increasing negative agricultural trade balance were a stimulus for the government to reconsider their policies related to agricultural market development. The objective of this paper is to identify the main changes and trends related to agricultural market development. The paper focuses on changes related to agricultural trade value development realised by the CIS countries. The agricultural trade is analysed using the Lafay index. The whole analysis is conducted according to the harmonised system (SITC 3 rev.) in current USD. The results show that the agriculture and foodstuff production capacity of Russia and all the CIS countries has increased over the last decade; self-sufficiency is improving especially at CIS level. Individual countries encourage their mutual cooperation - they have already established an entity similar to a free-trade zone and in the future they would like to establish a custom union or common market. The level of protection of their market is increasing - especially in the Russian Federation. An effort to provide enough space for growth of domestic production capacities is especially visible with respect to the applied ban on selected foodstuff imports.