The Agrarian Trade Transformation in the Visegrad Countries

This paper identifies and analyzes the changes that have occurred in terms of territorial and commodity structure of agrarian trade (exports) of countries of the Visegrad Group (or V4 -i.e. Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia) in the period 1993-2008. In terms of methodological approaches, the analysis is divided into several parts dealing with the development of the agrarian trade of the Visegrad Group in terms of commodity and territorial structure, as well as from the perspective of the sensitivity of agrarian trade (exports) to the changing economic environment. The paper concludes that in recent years, both the value and volume of V4 export and import operations increased significantly. In the case of exports, individual countries have managed increasing its volumes of exported sophisticated products. The share of current EU members on the value of V4 agricultural trade is increasing at the expense of trade with "third countries". EU accession and its common market forced all analyzed V4 countries to restructure the export commodity structure and most of them (excluding Hungary) have been able to export in the EU market sophisticated products with higher unit prices. It is expected that with the intensification of V4 integration within the EU single market, prices of agrarian exports will rise further. V4 countries are going through a gradual process of specialization of exports of a limited number of aggregate commodity groups. Various specific factors might cause an overall restructuring of the agrarian sector and foreign trade activities in the V4 countries.