OREANDA-NEWS. October 27, 2008. The Agricultural Policy Ministry of Ukraine is proposing that the export duty on sunflower seeds (coded УКТ ВЭД 120600) be lifted for the period until September 1, 2009, reads the bill to be tabled in parliament for the prevention of the global financial crisis impact on Ukraine's agro-industrial complex.

In the opinion of the document authors, its adoption will make it possible to overcome Ukraine's negative processes of rapid reduction of sunflower seed and oil prices, and create competitive environment in the market of those goods.

Commenting a possible adoption of the bill, Iryna Kuznetsova, deputy director general of the UkrOilProm association, noted that the move may provoke a crisis situation not only in oil-and-fat industry, but in Ukraine's food market on the whole.

"The export duty lifting will lead to destruction of the branch, closure of the majority of enterprises, return to raw material exports, and finally make Ukraine play a raw-exports role for the European Union," Kuznetsova noted.