Analysis of the competitiveness in the agritrade among visegrad countries

Vásáry, Miklós – Kránitz, Lívia – Vasa, László – Baranyai, Zsolt

Keywords: export-import ratio, Balassa-index, Herfindahl–Hirschman-index

The accession of the Visegrad countries (V4) to the European Union (EU) in 2004 has resulted in a number of opportunities and challenges in terms of agricultural trade. The elimination of duties and other trade barriers immediately induced an increase in trading activity. As a result of integration into the common internal market, the free fl ow of goods has inevitably led to the expansion of trade turnover. In the case of ‘old’ EU member states the trade turnover has gradually widened while in relation to neighbouring countries it happened markedly and within a very short time. According to our research, the value and volume of agri-trade turnover of the V4 has expanded significantly due to the changes in the last 12 years. The trade balance in the case of the EU15 was positive only in regard to Hungary and Poland, while in trade among the V4 only in Slovakia could it reach negative but improving values. It can also be concluded that the market concentration of some products has also decreased owing to the opera-tion of the common internal market and the strengthening internal market competi-tion. It is remarkable that the preaccession period preparations for the common mar-ket operation substantially affected the values. In spite of the generally growing trade activity, competitiveness for the whole period improved only in relation to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, while this index declined in all the other relations. Therefore EU membership has created markets and possibilities, but competitiveness in terms of foreign trade has not improved. In other words, the New member states could not or only to a limited extent utilise the opportunities coming from EU membership.

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