Kyiv, February 22, 2018. The Survey conducted in February demonstrates improvements of respondents’ perception of the agricultural business climate (ABC), which reached 37.6 points.

Respondents noted an increase in revenues. At the same time, they indicated strong confidence in perspective income levels. Additionally, results show steady increase in estimation of current and perspective business development (land bank size, number of machines etc.), as latter surged from 11.4 points in November 2017 to currently 26 points. Positive moods among producers may reveal readiness to invest in modern machinery, plant protection products, seeds, land bank expansion and/or increase in livestock numbers. Successively, questions on impact of general policy and economic frameworks received strongly negative estimates.

ABC assessment in black soil (central) and western regions of Ukraine had overall positive impact on ABC and amounted to 47.9 and 41.1 points respectively. Producers from Southern regions estimated ABC at the level of 27.6 points. Lowest results were provided by producers from North-East regions accounting for 25.4 points.

Referring to production scale, highest ABC estimates were provided by producers with land bank over 5,000 ha amounting to 44.1 points. In addition, producers in holdings’ structures estimated ABC positively on the level of 41.4 points. Interestingly, responses provided by producers with land bank less than 5,000 ha demonstrated sharp increase from 19.1 in November 2017 to now 33.7 points.

Crop producers provided notably higher estimation of ABC on the level of 40.2 points, animal producers – at the level of 28.5 points and mixed – at the level of 37.1 points.

Agriculture business climate cycle clock demonstrates an estimation of current business situation and perspectives provided by agro producers.

ABC indicator grew mainly due to high appraisal of assumed business perspectives, as business expectations illustrated markedly better results in comparison to the last survey: 43.4 and 34.7 points respectively. However, current business situation estimation slightly decreased from 33.7 points in November 2017 to currently 31.9 points.

Note: Agriculture Business Climate (ABC) was developed and introduced by common efforts of German-Ukrainian Agricultural Policy Dialogue (APD) and the association “Ukrainian Agribusiness Club” (UCAB) on the base of German business climate (ifo-Geschäftsklimaindex). ABC surveys are carried out three times per year since 2015. ABC determines subjective perceptions of 400 Ukrainian producers on both, their current business situation and one-year outlook. ABC may change from -100 (very poor) over 0 (indifferent) to +100 (very good). Starting from 2017, technical improvements in calculation of ABC have been implemented. In particular, only the first question on economic situation of producers is considered in the calculation. More detailed questions, e.g., on the business characteristics and macroeconomic framework, are now used for explanation of the results. Hence, ABC has been recalculated under new methodology for all of the surveys, which led to its steady increase.