Food sales to countries including France more than made up for a collapse in Polish exports to Russia, following an import embargo imposed by Moscow, according to one of the country’s biggest agriculture lenders.
Poland’s food exports jumped 4.5 per cent to €21.3 billion ($23.5 billion) last year, data compiled by BGZ BNP Bank SA showed. While sales to Russia dropped 30 per cent, the decline was offset by a 23-per-cent growth in exports to France, 19 per cent to Belgium and 8 per cent to Italy, according to the report.
Russia’s ban on imports of some European Union food products, imposed last August amid the conflict in Ukraine, spurred local campaigns to promote consumption of home-grown products and encouraged sales to other foreign markets. The move’s consequences weren’t as severe as initially feared because Russia accounts for just 4 per cent of Polish agriculture exports, mainly fruit and vegetables, according to the lender, a unit of France’s BNP Paribas SA.
Poland also benefitted from selling more goods to countries such as Belarus and Serbia, which may have later re-exported these products to Russia, the report said.
The nation’s food exports are set to increase 8 percent in 2015 in part because of rising prices, Dariusz Winek, chief economist at BGZ BNP, said at a news conference in Warsaw. When Russia reinstates EU food imports, Polish producers shouldn’t have “any problems” winning back their market share, he said.
News by Bloomberg, edited by ESM
