Food aid for the poor – key working tool for protection of food interestsof ukraine’s population

The need to protect the food interests of Ukrainian citizens is conditioned by a number of pressing challenges – insufficient level of income, high growth rates of consumer food prices, excessive level of market concentration, excessive volumes of food exports, which cause a deficit in the domestic market, etc. For a full-scale deployment of the Ukrainian food aid program, it is necessary to preliminarily conduct an experiment. As part of the experiment, we propose to involve low-income citizens in the program, who has a total income not exceeding 130% of the poverty line (subsistence level). According to the statistics of 2017, the protection of food interests needs those households whose average income is less than UAH 2,085 per month – these are household’s first decile group. The average benefit is UAH 284 per person per month. A tentative budget for food aid for all households and the decile group should be UAH 1204.6 million. An increase in food expenditure by 1% will lead to an increase in real GDP of Ukraine by 0.97%. Food expenditures of the population of Ukraine in 2017 amounted to UAH 673539.0 million. Their increase by UAH 1204.6 million, or 0.18%, will cause real GDP growth of 0.17% or UAH 4266.9 million.