Prospects of achieving the world standards of meat consumption in Ukraine

The article analyses possible variants of growth of the level of consumption of meat products (beef, pork, and poultry) during the nearest 6 years. The article considers, as a basic variant, planned indicators provided by the Institute of Agrarian Economy and approved in "Strategy of Development of the Agrarian Sector for the Period until 2020". Based on the time series of meat products consumption during 2000 - 2012, the article builds a forecast of consumption until 2020 using methods of econometric analysis. The article compares the obtained forecast indicators with official indicators, on the basis of which a conclusion is made with respect to groundlessness of planned indicators of beef consumption, for realisation of which the 15% annual growth is needed. In order to specify the level of meat products consumption depending on the level of income, the whole population was presented in the form of three groups: under-provided (40%), averagely provided (30%) and well-provided (30%). Optimisation task for maximum of caloricity of the meat products basket, with availability of budget and production (built up on the forecast) restrictions, was solved for each group. In the result an optimal ration, which differs significantly both in composition and caloricity, was obtained for each group. Moreover, the article shows that in order to achieve these meat products baskets, it is necessary to bring beef import up to 210 thousand tonnes and the unclaimed 190 thousand tonnes of pork and 210 tonnes of poultry could be exported.