Given the fact that the products of the processing industry dominate in the structure of import of Ukrainian goods and services, it becomes necessary to study the dependence of the Ukrainian economy on this type of industrial production. To this end, an assessment of the dependence of the Ukrainian economy on imports of intermediate products of manufacturing industries was made. The data of the tables «input-output» is the information base for such an assessment. According to the results of the calculations, a high level (> 45%) of the dependence of the Ukrainian consumer market on imports of industrial goods was revealed. In 2016, over 70% of final consumption of products of 9 out of 16 manufacturing industries in Ukraine was secured by imports. The highest import dependence in final consumption was peculiar to the goods of high- and medium technology intensive industries (81.08% and 73.62% respectively), and more than 90% of need for consumer goods of two production sectors (computers and vehicles) belonging to these groups, was secured by import. In addition, the import dependence on end-use goods and some middle-and low-tech industries (production of rubber and plastic products, textile production, clothing, leather and other materials, furniture production, and other products) was critically high (> 80%). Thus, the promising directions of import substitution in Ukraine are related primarily to the mentioned production and are analytically grounded. According to the results of the comparison of the structure of final consumption of domestic and imported products in the processing industry, the paper determines the availability of significant reserves for Ukrainian commodity producers in the direction of expanding their assortment, and thus filling new niches in the domestic market. This concerns, first of all, the production of machinery and equipment, other vehicles, computers, electronic and optical products, as well as chemical production. The author verifies the hypothesis that for the implementation of import substitution in the Ukrainian economy, it is necessary to carry out detailed calculations of the capacity of the target market segments (both internal and external), the volume of investments necessary for the organization of the corresponding production, their profitability and the payback period, as well as the number of newly created jobs for each of the identified directions.