The UAC is outraged by another attempt of fraud and manipulation by the fertilizer monopolist in Ukraine, the company group “OSTCHEM”. Representatives of the company are trying to mislead the court by providing biased and distorted information in order to persuade the court to overturn the decision of the Interdepartmental Commission on International Trade not to introduce quotas on imports of fertilizers from trading partners of Ukraine.

On January 16, the group “OSTCHEM” representative sent to the participants of the process in the County Administrative Court of Kyiv the conclusion of the International LLC “Expert Legal Group” in support of its claims for the introduction of quotas on mineral fertilizers in Ukraine. The conclusion was prepared by order of LLC “Sales Capital”.

The document says that the introduction of quotas will have a positive impact on the agricultural sector and the economy, as reduced competition will allow plaintiffs, including the company group “OSTCHEM”, which is a monopolist in the fertilizer market, to raise prices for their products in the local market, improve financial performance. increase sales and production, as well as reduce production costs.

The experts motivated their conclusions by the fact that the volume of “OSTCHEM” sales in the second half of 2018 until the first half of 2019 fell by 5% compared to 2016 due to competition with foreign, primarily Russian products. In addition, the applicants allegedly sold their products on the domestic market at a loss. The conclusion was prepared at the base of "conference" and "non-conference" questionnaires provided by LLC “Sales Capital”.

The UAC considers this document to be absolutely biased, unprofessional, custom-made, and deliberately misleading the court and society about to the real state of affairs.

Thus, the "experts" were silent about the fact that during 2017-2018 a number of measures were introduced to limit the import of fertilizers produced made the Russian Federation. And in 2019, a full embargo on their supply to Ukraine was imposed. Accordingly, competition from Russian companies does not threaten domestic producers, and quotas are proposed for countries that are partners of Ukraine, such as the EU’s countries, Turkey, the United States and Georgia.

Also, the "experts" were silent about the fact that the volume of fertilizer production by domestic enterprises began to grow rapidly, increasing in 2019 compared to 2018 by 67%, and in the first half of 2020 compared to the first half of 2019 - by another 150%, while imports fell by 54%. In other words, the domestic chemical industry is experiencing an unprecedented boom, not a fall.

Moreover, the "experts" decided to ignore all the key issues and objections of farmers. For example, why did the company group “OSTCHEM”, claiming losses on the sale of fertilizers in the domestic market, exported and export its products at prices well below domestic prices? The corresponding gap sometimes reached 50%.

The low professional level of the experts is also indicated by the fact that, according to their report, do not know the correct name of the documents they allegedly analyzed. After all, such a document as a "conference" and "non-conference" version of the questionnaire does not exist, and can provide them with "confidential" and "non-confidential" versions. The LLC “International Expert Legal Group” was registered in 2017 and managed to change its owner during this time.

We will remind, in the summer of 2020, farmers went on protest campaign against the intention of the Ministry of Development of Economy, Trade and Agriculture to enter quotas on import of nitrogen fertilizers to Ukraine. That was the issue about imports from the EU, the Persian Gulf, North Africa, as well as Turkey, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Georgia, China and the United States. The consequences of the introduction of quotas on fertilizer imports were also assessed in the EU. The Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine mentioned that such a decision would negatively affect Ukrainian farmers and threaten to artificially restrict competition. At the same time, the Lithuanian Seimas added that the introduction of quotas would worsen relations between Ukraine and the EU. As a result, in June 2020, the Interdepartmental Commission on International Trade decided to terminate the special investigation into the import of fertilizers without the application of special measures.

At the same time, in July 2020, the company group “OSTCHEM” appealed to the court to declare illegal the actions of the Ministry of Economy during preparing of conclusions in the framework of a special investigation into the import of fertilizers to Ukraine - to cancel the decision of the Interdepartmental Commission on International Trade of June 22, 2020, by which the agency terminated the special investigation into the import of fertilizers without the application of special measures. In addition, the companies demand that the Commission be obliged to decide on the application of quotas for the import of fertilizers to Ukraine in order to reduce competition and raise prices in the domestic market.