From January to December last year Ukraine imported 146.5 thousand vehicles which customs value exceeded 1.6 billion US dollars, with reference to the Ukravtoprom association’s data.

Thus, the number of cars imported to Ukraine dropped more than twice as compared to the previous year’s figures, while being expressed in monetary terms it showed a decrease of 60%. Notably, total import of goods to Ukraine in 2014 fell by 28% compared to the figures for 2013.

In sum, 62.6 thousand passenger cars out of total imported vehicles made up 43 percent. Importers spent a bit more than 1.2 billion US dollars to make the purchase. As a result, the average customs value of cars grew by 2 thousand dollars compared to 19.3 thousand US dollars in the previous year. In numerical terms, import of passenger cars dropped by 64%, in monetary terms – by 60 percent.

The bulk of imports were new cars. While used vehicles with some mileage were less than 7% out of total number.

The majority of passenger cars were imported to Ukraine from Japan – 11 751 units, or 19% out of total imported vehicles of this category. However, Japan earned 301 million US dollars from sale of cars to Ukraine.

The second best trading country was Germany, with 6 165 passenger cars worth 188 million US dollars.

The People’s Republic of Korea resolutely took the third place in terms of trade volume of 5 507 vehicles. The customs assessed the value of Chinese cars to be 18.2 million US dollars.

Among the major passenger car suppliers were also the US and Russia with 4 184 and 4 072 vehicles, respectively.

Commercial cars made up 56% out of total car imports in 2014 (82.7 thousand units). The customs value of vehicles of this segment was 419 million US dollars.

As compared to 2013, the number of commercial cars imported to Ukraine dropped by 43 thousand units or 34 percent.

Last year, Germany, France and Italy supplied over 80% of all cars to Ukraine. Meantime, 38 130 vehicles imported from Germany cost 165.1 million US dollars, 76.3 million US dollars were spent on 23 082 French brands, the customs value of 6 392 commercial vehicles imported from Italy was 23.7 million US dollars.

96% out of total commercial cars imported in 2014 to Ukraine were used cars.

A share of buses in the last year’s imports made up around 1 percent. Like commercial cars, majority of buses imported in 2014 were used vehicles equalling 86% out of total number.

In total, 1.2 thousand buses worth 14.5 million US dollars were imported from January to December, showing a decrease of 59% in number, compared to the last year, and 68% - in terms of value.

In this segment, 60% of cars were imported from Germany – 707 buses worth 6.3 million US dollars.

134 buses worth 2.2 million US dollars were imported from Russia, the second largest trader.

The third trading partner was Poland – 54 buses (655.3 thousand US dollars).