Can Ukraine Repeat The Path Of Asian Tigers? Or Should It Bother At All?

Description

High-tech goods are not necessarily high-value added. KSE explains the difference.

Very often we hear Ukrainian policy-makers say that our country should increase exports of high-value added goods. As examples they usually name products of electronics or machine-building industries, or more specifically, airplanes and ships. We explain that agricultural products such as fruit or honey have more value-added than, for example, manufacturing of mobile phones from imported parts. We suggest that Ukrainian companies should either try to enter the global value chains or find their highly differentiated market niches where they have most of the production cycle within the country.