Ukraine is one of the biggest suppliers of grain in the world, to Italy in particular. In April the statistics on Ukrainian export to Italy during the period of 2012 (January-February) was published at the website of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine. According to the information gathered by the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, Italy was listed one among 10 states with the biggest business transactions with Ukraine. In terms of Ukraine’s trade with Europe Italy ranks as the third one.
Ukrainian agricultural business
Ukrainian agricultural business is well structured and there are a lot of big trade companies with a long time experience and established reputation, nevertheless there are also middle sized and small companies that might not have a lot of international transactions yet but could also become reliable partners in international trade. There are two ways to ensure safe business transaction – to check your counter-party and to include specific “protective” provisions in the contract.
By emphasizing the fact that we are not saying that Ukrainian companies are unreliable, in contrast, we would like to underline that among the list of defaulters (so-called black list) published by Gafta in 2013 there was only one Ukrainian company in default in comparison to 4 in the Uk, 2 in Austria, 2 in the United Arab Emirates (Uae) and 2 in Canada. What we are saying is that in case you do not have established business relationship with your potential business partner – there is a need to check its credibility, no matter where it comes from.
Methods to check liability
There are a lot of methods available to check the liability of your business partner. Firstly, general information which can be easily gathered is available. Here there are some methods.
- Excerpts from the official state registries (registry of reported court cases and state companies’ registry), where you can find out in details information about the company, in particular: full and short title of legal person in case it exists, identification number, location, list of founders, data about the size of the statutory fund and director, date of state registration, information about current bankruptcy, any data about dissolution of legal person, information regarding the deadline for the creditors to submit their claims, date and number of the state registration about termination of the legal person, date and number of cancellation of state registration about termination of legal person, grounds of such registration and so on (available at http://irc.gov.ua/). You can also find information about number of legal proceedings initiated against them if there are any (regions, parties, subject-matter, sums of dispute etc.) (available at http://www.reyestr.court.gov.ua/).
- In case your potential business party has Gafta membership, the history on award enforcement through Gafta system can be tracked.
- You can also investigate public information available in the internet about the company. For example, you can check if it is a member of reputable local grain associations (Ukrainian Agrarian Association, Agrarian Union of Ukraine, Ukrainian Grain Association, Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation, Ukrainian Agribusiness Club), or if it participated in specialized forums, conferences, round tables and so on.
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