Russian Agricultural Exports: Economic and Statistical Analysis

Abstract

The article presents the results of an economic and statistical analysis of Russian agricultural exports from 2012 to 2021 – a period of intensive growth during which revenue in foreign markets doubled, and the country entered the top twenty leaders in food exports. The in- fluence of the factors of physical volume and price on the dynamics of exports of products from the agricultural sector of Russia is analyzed, and a change in the assessment of the contribution of individual product categories to export growth was revealed when recalculating indica- tors from current prices to comparable prices. It has been established that average prices for Russian agricultural products are half the world pri-ces, which leads to a lack of income from the export of agricultural products for Russia (on average, about 4.9 billion US dollars per year for the last five years). The main reason for this deviation is that a significant share of the structure of Russian food exports is made up of products with a low degree of processing. Additionally, there is a situation with lower prices for some Russian goods of a comparable range, primarily in the food and processing industries.An assessment of the risks to the sustainability of Russian agribusiness in the event of a disruption in export supplies showed that, given the low level of development of intra-industry trade, domestic production remains quite vulnerable to a potential reduction in exports when foreign trade restrictions are introduced. If trade chains are broken, only 20% of exports can be redirected to the domestic market to replace imports.An analysis of the achievement of targets for the development of Russian agricultural exports in 2016–2021 was carried out and indicates that, despite its significant overall growth during the period under study, in some years its dynamics lagged behind the values established in state programs, even considering their repeated adjustments. This is largely due to the dependence of the growth of Russian exports of agricultural products on the increase in the production of grain and oilseeds, which is influenced, among other things, by random weather factors. Thus, based on data for individual years, it is impossible to judge the success or failure in the implementation of Russian agricultural export devel- opment programs, and the methodology for assessing the achievement of target indicators itself requires improvement.