The investigation of the state of Ukraine furniture industry development under current economic conditions

Abstract

Furniture for a long time has been an integral component of human activity, recreation and everyday life. Its design, diversity and versatility along with the development of human civilization is increasingly becoming the object of further improvement. At present furniture production in Ukraine is the developing industry, gradually entering the European market in terms of quality and design. European furniture market is extremely attractive to operators and, therefore, has dynamics towards the competitor number increase. One of the factors of increasing the industry attractiveness is the support of amendments to the Law of Ukraine «On peculiarities of state regulation of business entities related to the sale and export of timber» by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in April 2015, which imposed temporary, gradual prohibition on the export of raw timber (forest logs) for 10 years. The corresponding partial prohibition entered into force on 11.01.2015, and complete prohibition (including pine wood) - from January 1, 2017. The consequences of this moratorium during the first five years of its operation, which is important in the context of politicization of this problem are analyzed in this paper. The dynamics and structure of the amount of enterprises in industry and the number of employees employed in them are investigated. The volume of furniture industry sales in general and the areas of their implementation (internal or external markets) are analyzed. The next stage is the analysis of the dynamics of the ratio of furniture products exports and imports in Ukraine and determination of the major exporters of such products. The final stage is the investigation of the dynamics of foreign direct investments in the enterprises capital share in this industry in order to identify its investment attractiveness. As a result, it is determined that the introduced moratorium has partial positive impact on the development of furniture industry in Ukraine. However, at present, the furniture industry is not attractive enough for new foreign investment. This is the consequence of significant amount of «shadow» production, which in its turn destabilizes the situation in the furniture market. Ukrainian manufacturers will be able to strengthen their position in domestic market and even abroad, if they solve the main problems in furniture production and eliminate all disincentives.