**4.1 General development trends**

Collapse of the USSR in 1991 broke established supply chains and stopped large infrastructural projects thus substantially reducing demand for steel. Therefore, the iron ore production in Kryvyi Rih in early 1990s plunged down as shown in **Figure 5**. Mining enterprises faced a severe financial situation. Profit and available capital decreased drastically: up to 80% of transactions in the steel sector were made via barter schemes during this period, impeding accumulation of capital [8].

Further drop of iron ore output was prevented in the frames of a large scale "sectorial experiment" covering the entire mining-metallurgical complex of Ukraine and conducted from August 1999 to January 2003, providing enterprises with state assistance and allowing companies to accumulate finances for improving technologies and environmental safety under special taxation regime [8]. The state of Ukraine's mining sector was improved and iron ore output started to rapidly grow, as shown in **Figure 5**. Meanwhile export opportunities have been gradually exploited, especially after 2008, when the domestic demand shrank drastically in the aftermath of financial crisis followed by recession. **Figure 6** compares iron amount of the produced ore with the output of pig iron (blast furnace ironmaking is the sole large consumer of iron ore products - sinter and pellets in Ukraine). The both values, after being fluctuating almost in parallel, since 2009 gradually decouple from each other, and in 2019, first ever, output of pig iron drops by 2.4% although the iron amount of the produced ore grew by 2.8%. This illustrates orientation of mining sector rather not on the domestic needs but on the global markets as shown in **Figure 7**, since 2015 over 60% of the iron ore output is exported.
