Changing Priorities of the Hungarian Agricultural Foreign Trade Based on German Markets

Szabó, Jenő

Keywords: export structure, added value, German market, foreign market, grain exports, Q17

Our export structure began to show a spectacular improvement in 2018, after the export of unprocessed agricultural products, the grain exports dropped drastically. With the spread of processed products, the added value of the Hungarian agricultural exports has grown, so an important agricultural policy goal seems to be achieved. However, we do not want such an artificial improvement. We do not find any Hungarian food on the shelves of our Western European partners. The phenomenon suggests that, at the level of processed products, the majority of our external market supply is still provide by lowgrade intermediate products. The change in the supply structure affects the order of the external market, weaken our traditional markets, position in the export order and give the opportunity to other markets.
This weakening of the position is also noticeable in the case of the German market, which is our most important agricultural market. Our export to the German market, which has been expanding for decades, started to shrink (in quarter I-III of 2018), mainly due to this drastic decline in grain exports and some oily seed products. Due to that fact, it would be worth examining more closely the internal relations of the German market. Of the four sections, only the fourth, namely food preparations, beverages, tobacco products, is considered to be our leading German foreign market.
Examining the exports and imports, we can see that the import position of the German market is much stronger than the Hungarian agricultural export to Germany. The German suppliers are the leading source of imports in three sections, while the Hungarian agricultural export appears only in Section IV in the German market.
However, we can conclude from the collision between the Hungarian agricultural export to German market and the import of the food from there, that in many cases product groups with the same product code change hands. The only difference is that the average price of the German market import product group is significantly higher than the average price of Hungarian agricultural exports. In Germany, the tourists do not feel that Hungarian processed food products are over-represented on the shelves of German grocery stores, although this is the most frequent market for our exports. The question arises: where is the relatively large quantity of Hungarian exports, and in what form is the Hungarian food represent in the German market? As the structure and magnitude of our German market exports and imports show significant overlaps, it would be worth examining which Hungarian agricultural export products are used as raw material for the higher value added German products that are imported to Hungary.

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