How to Develop the Competitive Agriculture of Kosovo to Compete in the Regional Markets

Presently, development levels of Kosovo agriculture is under the level of development opportunities and of what’s desired. Its potential is enormous and become counted as one of the pillars of Kosovo economic development. Its participation in GDP in 2011 was 20% (while in 2004 was 25%), and participation in employment by 42%. A high turnout of agriculture in GDP is not a result of its development but the stalemate of industry and other sectors of economy. It now has an installed processor capacity but used 10-20% and the absence of a vertical and horizontal integration between agricultural producers, processing and trade in the manufacture of final products which are offered to consumers. The cost of inputs is high and this makes the final products have high costs and are not competitive in the market. These final products produced in Kosovo are more cumulative but face a strong competition from foreign producers. Although the imports of food and beverages has a higher participation in the total import with trend of increasing trade deficit (in 2008 the general trade deficit was EUR 1.7 million). Efforts go toward activities which have to undertake in order to develop competitive advantages to be faced in the market.