The industrial community of Ukraine is against ordering 16 modern Mark VI patrol boats and the equipment they need for $600 million from the United States, the press service of the Ukrainian League of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (ULIE) has said.
“The main duty of the authorities is to take care of the economic development of their own country, filling their own state budget, creating jobs at home. The orders in question only contribute to the growth of foreign budgets and stabilize the situation with employment in other states and do not help overcome crisis in our country. This is unacceptable and irresponsible,” the ULIE President, the chairman of the Anti-Crisis Council of Public Organizations, Anatoliy Kinakh, said.
In addition to ordering boats, industrialists pay attention to the purchase of imported locomotives and helicopters, which, in their opinion, could threaten serious socio-economic consequences for the whole country.
Kinakh emphasized that Ukraine has its own shipbuilding industry – highly professional production facilities, including in Mykolaiv, which are capable of building modern military boats and other small tonnage ships with a certain modernization.
“At this difficult time, the responsible government must develop both a national strategy for industrial and innovative development, and separate programs for shipbuilding, other priority areas of industry, to use all the levers to support the complex high-tech industry, starting from manufacturers’ access to credit resources, mitigating fiscal burden, changes in public procurement that would allow attracting public finances to load national producers,” he said.
