Ukraine'S Metallurgical Industry: Output Dynamics Through The Prism Of External Factors

Domestic metallurgical industry is an integral part of the world industry, and its development takes place in the context of global trends, such as constant growth of metallurgical production with simultaneous excess of smelting, increasing concentration of production, and increasing consumption and export of metal products in TOP-15 leading smelting countries. The main consequence of such trends is a significant intensification of competition on the global steel market. Despite the fact, that Ukraine’s metallurgical industry is an important participant in the global market of ferrous metals and raw materials for their production and has certain advantages in their production and export, like the whole Ukraine’s economy, is open and small in macroeconomic terms. This gives grounds to refer Ukraine’s metallurgical industry of to the category of "small open industry", which is characterized by export orientation, a small share of output in global output, exports, imports, and domestic consumption and, most importantly – by the lack of decisive influence on world prices. Since Ukraine’s metallurgical industry is small and open, and the vast majority of its products are shipped to world markets, it was suggested that the dynamics of metallurgical output is directly influenced by external factors such as world steel prices, the hryvnia exchange rate and the price for natural gas. The obtained results confirmed the hypothesis that Ukraine’s metallurgical industry throughout the entire study period was completely dependent on the action of external factors. In particular, the favorable price situation on the global market of metal products ensured a high dynamics of metallurgical output. At the same time, devaluation of Ukrainian national currency in different periods had different effects. The price for natural gas restrained the metallurgical output throughout the entire study period.