Foreign Trade of Ukraine with West-European Countries

The article justifies that, at this stage of European integration of Ukraine, trade relations with European countries, with the aim of their strengthening and expansion, require deeper study and analysis. Since the main trade partners of Ukraine during the past decade include mostly West-European countries, it is quite justified to conduct a separate study of foreign economic links of Ukraine with West-European countries. The article analyses modern stage of foreign trade with the above mentioned countries, identifies main tendencies of foreign trade both in pre-crisis and in post-crisis periods. Conclusions were made on the basis of the analysis on a significant level of dependence of the Ukrainian domestic market upon dominating commodities from Western Europe with a high level of added value and also on existence of significant disproportions in trade with the above mentioned countries, which appeared in 2000 - 2007, have become deeper and are a threat to strategic interests of Ukraine. These processes increase a need of Ukrainian exporters in availability of economic and mathematical models, which would allow revelation of tendencies and regularities in Ukrainian trade with West-European countries. The article offers regression models which describe indicators of trade export and import of Ukraine with Western Europe and which are built using the method of step-by-step selection of factors. Analysis of strategic characteristics of these models, conducted with the purpose of assessment of their forecast properties, allows making a conclusion on high quality of built equations. Taking into account the above, the models could be used for development of imitation forecasts during scientific justification of decisions in the sphere of foreign trade, which is identified as a direction of further study.