We Have Built a Bridge that Everyone’s Using Now to Move Goods. Bakhmatyuk Explains How He Opened Chinese Market for Ukraine
Oleg Bakhmatyuk, the owner of Ukrlandfarming, one of Ukraine's largest agricultural groups, told how he almost moved to China for 244 days to promote Ukraine and open the Chinese market to Ukrainian products
The businessman said this in an interview with Channel 112 TV presenter Dmitry in Spivak. According to him, when he was returning from mainland China, he was informed at the customs post in Shanghai that he had been in China for 244 days without interruption, "Ukrainian News" informs. According to the businessman, the political and business circles of China did not even know where Ukraine was before. A year later, at the Communist Party Congress, the country's leadership declared that Ukraine was a strategic partner of China.
"When we came with a representative of Deutsche Bank in 2011 and met with a CIC (the largest sovereign wealth fund in China, managing hundreds of billions of dollars, one of the decision-makers in China's economic development) representative, I made a presentation about Ukrlandfarming and Ukraine. He listened, was interested, and then at the end he asked me a question: where is Ukraine? Is it somewhere between Russia and Poland?"
A year later, at the Chinese Communist Party Congress in December 2012, the Chinese Prime Minister and Minister of Economy said in his speech that Ukraine is China's strategic partner," says Oleg Bakhmatyuk. — "I am not saying that I was solely responsible for this. But we spent that time meeting with Chinese companies. We received a licence to supply Ukrainian corn to China. We brought about a hundred Chinese journalists to Ukraine at our expense. We made a presentation of Ukraine in China. Chinese media with a circulation of 100 million copies wrote about us. We have built this bridge, which is now moving all of this, and we are pleased that we have succeeded."
"Ukrlandfarming is one of the largest agricultural groups in the country in terms of land holdings. The group's companies operate in 600 communities in 22 regions of Ukraine. The group of companies is growing grains and oilseeds, seeds, does livestock farming and production of eggs and egg products (Avangardco IPL). Oleg Bakhmatyuk is the Ukrlandfarming owner.