Trade Performance and Competitiveness of the Slovak Wood Processing Industry within the Visegrad Group Countries

The aim of this paper is to analyse trade performance and competitiveness of the Slovak wood processing industry sectors and their comparison with the Visegrad group countries. The competitiveness is studied for the products of primary wood processing, namely coniferous and non-coniferous sawnwood, wood based panels, wood pulp, paper and paperboard products. A set of trade performance and competitiveness indicators is used to analyse the position and changes in competitiveness of the respective countries in 2003-2012. In particular, Trade Specialisation Index, Export/Import Ratio, Standard Grubel-Lloyd Index, Revealed Comparative Advantage and Vollrath’s Revealed Competitive Advantage Indexes were used to identify comparative advantages and trade specialisation for individual forest product categories and a specific country’s performance. Within the group of analysed countries, Slovakia has revealed comparative advantage in most of the products, in particular in the trade with coniferous sawnwood, non-coniferous sawnwood, wood based panels and paper and paperboard products. Results of the analysis also pointed out that intra-industry specialisation is increasing with the level of value added to products.