Latin American Direction of Ukrainian Economic Diplomacy: The Overview of Successes and Failings

Abstract

In the article, the authors analyzed successes and failings of the Ukrainian economic diplomacy in Latin America region. Such results were achieved by analyzing the degree of scientific investigation the possibilities, features and basic characteristics of economic diplomacy by contemporary Ukrainian and foreign researchers, as well as by analyzing the websites of Ukrainian embassies in Latin American countries and using the information of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine and mass media. Researchers drew attention to the peculiarities of economic relations between Ukraine and Latin America countries. It has been found that bilateral relations between Ukraine and Latin American countries are generally poorly developed, the embassies of Ukraine exist only in five countries: Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil and Chile, and these embassies in turn represent Ukraine’s national interests in 15 other Latin American countries. Ukraine has the most well-established economic relations with the first five above-mentioned countries as a result of economic diplomacy. It was concluded that Ukrainian economic diplomacy has some achievements (the developing of volume of export-import operations between Ukraine and all regional countries, except Cuba, and the opening of the honorary consulate in Chile) and failings (the lack of diplomatic missions in all LA countries, problems with updating information on planned activities in the economic sphere (2015, 2016) on the embassies’ web-site, negative trade balance for Ukraine).