The Ukrainian government is planning to open European integration offices in all regions, as is evident from the government action program, whose text is published on the Verkhovna Rada website.
“The government will ensure the establishment of European integration offices in all regions of Ukraine, with the primary focus on the southern and eastern regions, to make European integration advantages closer to the people and businesses at the local level,” the document said.
It intends to attain this primarily through fostering cultural and educational projects, contacts, and also economy and infrastructure involving the EU’s investments and financial assistance, it said.
The government is confident that an emphasis on “regionalization of Euro-integration” would help direct extra resources to provinces so that their residents could feel immediate advantages from Ukraine’s course toward integration with the EU, the document said.
The Ukrainian legislation should adopt at least 80% of the EU acts envisioned by the Association Agreement.
“Among the results of these measures would be consistent growth in support from Ukrainian citizens of our country’s integration with Europe,” it said.
The government said it is determined to make dialogue with the EU instrumental in fostering “growth of direct investment in Ukraine from companies from the European Union and an increase in the EU’s financial assistance for Ukraine.”
The Cabinet of Ministers sets a goal of raising $50 billion of investment for GDP growth of 40% in five years in the government program, Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk has said.
“We confirm that over the next five years (and we consider this situation realistic and aiming high with this ambition) we will come to a situation when our economy will grow by 40%. To do this, we need to attract somewhere $50 billion of investment,” he said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Monday, talking about the government’s program.
As reported, the State Statistics Service in 2018 substantially revised foreign direct investment (FDI) indicators in Ukraine in the form of equity capital: if at December 31, 2017 they amounted to $39.14 billion, then at January 1, 2018 – $31.59 billion. According to the statistics, FDI growth for the first half of 2019 amounted to $0.84 billion, compared with $0.69 billion in 2018 and $0.38 billion in 2017, while before that, three years FDI were reduced – totally by $22.47 billion.
In addition, according to Honcharuk, the government sets itself the task of creating 1 million jobs.
“We must create such conditions so that it would be comfortable for people to start a business, their own business, so that foreign companies would be interested in entering the country,” the prime minister said.
The government said in the program, posted on the website of the Verkhovna Rada on Monday, that the government intends to distribute new budget revenues according to the 70/30 principle, “where 70% will be invested in economic development, 30% will be spent on social security.”
“To simplify the calculations, we proceed from the fact that 1% of inclusive economic growth gives us about UAH 15 billion of revenue to the national budget,” the government said in the document.
In the opening statement of the program, bringing of all the main roads into good condition (24,000 km), the active development of the railway and the construction of five deep-sea ports and 15 airports are listed among the main plans.
Lviv Tech Angels, an investment fund supporting startups, has 10 potential investors and could sign the first deal with a startup at the early stage by the end of 2019, President of Lviv Tech Angels Michael Puzrakov has said.
“At the moment there are ten members of this club, ten potential investors. Now we are in search of a manager who would take up organizational work. When we hire a manager we will select startups,” Puzrakov told Interfax-Ukraine on the sidelines of the Lviv IT Arena forum.
According to him, the first investment of the fund is possible before the end of this year, although the fund does not have a specific plan.
Angels’ money (investing in a startup at an early stage in exchange for a company share) in startups comes from IT, from other successful startups, that is, those who have brought their companies to a profitable level and have free funds. They can evaluate the quality and prospects of startups and help them,” Puzrakov said.
Lviv Tech Angels investment fund was launched in June this year as part of Lviv IT Cluster, the union of IT companies.
INVESTMENT DEALS, INVESTMENT FUND, LVIV TECH ANGELS, SUPPORTING STARTUPS
The Kyivstar mobile communications operator has connected Chornobyl (Kyiv region) and the complex of buildings on the territory of Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP, the Shelter facility) to the 4G high-speed Internet network. The operator said on Monday that in the near future, 4G communications will be turned on at the main checkpoint at the entrance to the Chornobyl zone in the village of Dytiatky.
To date, the 4G communication network from Kyivstar operates in 6,795 cities and towns, with 29 million people living in them (70% of the country’s population).
The 4G high-speed mobile Internet has already been used by 7.250 million subscribers. In just a year, the number of such subscribers has quadrupled compared to August 2018.
Growth of IT industry in 2019 will be 30%, according to Vice President for Strategy and Technologies at GlobalLogic Ukraine Andriy Yarorsky.
He told reporters at a conference in Lviv on Friday, September 27 that by the end of 2019, only the export of computer services will bring about $3.5 billion to the country’s economy. Having maintained such high growth rates, the export software development industry can grow to $4.5 billion by the end of 2020, Yavorsky said.
“On average, the IT industry grew by 20-25% annually. We expect more rapid growth this year thanks to favorable conditions on the international market and demand for the developments by Ukrainian specialists. According to our estimates, the market growth can reach 30% by the end of 2019. GlobalLogic’s revenue in Ukraine traditionally grows slightly faster than the industry – by 32% in the first half of 2019 – and we plan to maintain high growth rates until the end of the year,” he said.
Yavorsky said that according to the results of the first half of 2019, the export of computer services amounted to about $1.6 billion, which is 31% more than the same period in 2018. There is also an increase in the number of IT specialists: if according to market estimates as of the middle of 2018, there were about 130,000 specialists in the industry, then according to the IT Ukraine Association, there are currently more than 160,000 specialists in the market, which is 22% more than a year earlier. However, according to him, the industry still lacks qualified engineers.
According to Yavorsky, the amount of taxes paid by the IT industry in January-June 2019 increased 29% compared to the same period in 2018, to UAH 8 billion (companies and private individuals). GlobalLogic Ukraine paid 71% more taxes in the first half of 2019 than last year, he said.
GlobalLogic Ukraine is the largest software developer in Ukraine. It has offices in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, and Mykolaiv.
Official rates of banking metals from national bank as of September 30
One troy ounce=31.10 grams
