Foreign trade with agricultural products in the Slovak Republic

The article analyses trends in territorial and commodity structure of the Slovak foreign agrarian trade. The aim of this paper is to analyze development of trade and competitiveness of agricultural commodities groups. The article analyses trade in period from the year 2004 to 2014 (period after EU accession). There is possibility to use different indicators by examining competitiveness of chosen agricultural products groups. To analyse an average growth rate of export and import within individual time series was used the geometric mean. To identify comparative advantages are used: RCA index (Revealed comparative advantage index) and its modifications RCA 1, RCA 2 and Grubel-Loyd index (GLI index) and Lafay Index (LFI). The results show that the value of agricultural exports and imports was growing during the analyzed period while the growth rate of agricultural exports was below the growth rate of agricultural imports. Agricultural exports increased from Euro 1,142 billion in 2004 to more than Euro 2,749 billion in 2014 and imports rose from Euro 1,663 billion to more than Euro 3,787 billion in the same period. The Slovak Republic reached negative trade balance with agricultural products during analysed period. Slovakia is mostly trading with the countries of the EU 28 (mostly Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Germany). From the point of commodity structure, Slovakia is exporting mostly these agricultural product groups HS04, HS10, HS17 and HS12. On other side Slovakia is importing following groups HS02, HS04, HS22 and HS 21