Ukraine can effectively recover now/The Day newspaper
Soviet history has long convinced that the effective evacuation of the industrial potential of the USSR has become one of the key successes in restructuring the country's economy on a war footing. Further – in the exclusive blog for the channel 24 website.
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The war goes on, life goes on
It took about 8 thousand wagons, and every day from 600 to 900 wagons with equipment, raw materials, materials were sent to the east.
I do not presume to assess how objective these figures quoted by Soviet historiography are, but there is no doubt that, both then and now, the restoration and building up of the national production potential is one of the cornerstones of economic stability in the fight against the enemy.
According to the data Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal, since the beginning of the war, about 700 enterprises have been moved to safe regions. More than 480 have already resumed their activities and are showing their first economic results.
Only in July, according to the Ministry of Finance, the budget deficit was reduced by almost 40 times. Of course, a significant merit in this is the international financial assistance to Ukraine. However, if we look at other budget items (personal income tax, military duty, VAT, corporate income tax), they also increased, and the economic activity of the relocated business and the resumption of its work play a significant role in this process. .
Challenges for Ukraine
However, so far all this does not allow solving the global challenges that the war has posed for the country. And they are more than serious: expectations of a budget deficit of almost 50 billion dollars by the end of the year, a drop in national GDP by more than 30%, more than 39 thousand destroyed infrastructure facilities, which already now need more than 17 billion dollars.
At the same time, such a large-scale business migration can also provoke a number of additional problems. Among them are the economic imbalance of the regions, the violation of the financial self-sufficiency of the communities, and then the threats to the foundations of decentralization, the catastrophic loss of human capital and labor resources potential for the economy.
Therefore, it is important to look for new formulas for modern economic solutions that can not just put the economy into recovery mode, and start the process of transforming the effective existence of the state, even in war conditions.
How to solve the problem
One of them is the Fast Recovery Plan recently proposed by the Office of the President, the main goal of which is to restore destroyed critical infrastructure in different parts of Ukraine in 5-6 months, including schools, housing and communal services, medical institutions and, of course, private and multi-apartment buildings.
The key idea is not just construction, but the creation of additional jobs, launching the construction and transport sectors, strengthening the purchasing power of the population, filling the central and local budgets and attracting the necessary additional cash reserves to the real sector of the economy without turning on the printing press.
Of course, in the implementation of this plan, there are great hopes for our international partners, and they more than justify them. Recently it became known that Estonia will rebuild 15 facilities in the Zhytomyr region. Great Britain will join the restoration of Kyiv and the Kyiv region. Italy is ready to build a drama theater in Mariupol. The Czech Republic will help Ukraine in the “green” post-war restoration of the environment.
However, partner support cannot block the mobilization of a country's domestic resources. And it's not just about finances. A few weeks ago, I wrote about one of the key principles of regional development, which allowed the countries of the Eurozone to successfully survive the global economic crisis of 2009 and rethink their own regional policies. This approach is called smart specialization.
It refers to the policy of economic growth based on innovations, in which an attempt is made to comprehensively analyze and manage the regional potential from the standpoint of attracting progressive scientific and technological development. And this approach, I am sure, should have one of the key places in the process of restoring the de-occupied territories.
Therefore, soon in the Kyiv region, namely in the three war-affected communities of the Brovarsky district, a pilot project will be launched to create strategies economic recovery of the respective territories, taking into account the smart specialization approach.
Four pluses of smart specialization
Why is this important right now and how can it become a successful ticket to rebuild not only the affected communities of the Kyiv region, but the entire economy?
Firstly, smart specialization is a good indicator to raise funds for the regions. In 2014-2020 alone, the budget for smart specialization projects for the EU countries amounted to 66 billion euros. Of these, neighboring Poland received 9.95 billion euros, Spain – 7.94 billion euros, Germany – 6.43 billion euros.
Ukraine, of course, is not yet a member of the EU, but has become one of the global trends, against which significant financial resources are already pouring into the country's economy. In addition, obtaining the status of a candidate for membership in the EU opens the door for us in the medium term to more financial resources within the EU funds, and therefore it is important to lay down and implement the right approach, according to the rules established for Europe, to development projects now.
Second, the implementation of this approach will strengthen the decentralization processes, which over the past six months have significantly weakened against the background of the centralization of the country's administration under martial law. After all, the key “bottom-up” principle pursued by smart specialization once again returns to local managers the role of not just observers, but one of the leaders in the transformation of their territories.
Thirdly, the key philosophy of reasonable specialization is the fight against challenges, using the arsenal of the internal potential of each of the regions and innovation. First of all, we are talking about specific economic effects in the form of, albeit local, but technological and modern industries that will become an element of sustainable development and, as a result, will affect the ability of communities in the future.
Fourth
strong>– the implementation of a reasonable specialization approach, whether it be industry, energy or the digital industry, will require highly qualified personnel, and, therefore, the return of labor resources important for the economy to the respective territories.
Therefore , without waiting for victory and the end of the war, it is already important to form conceptual strategies for the smart restoration of de-occupied territories on the principle of reasonable specialization, and to look for specific investment proposals that are potentially possible in the current security realities to fill them. After all, even a small-scale 3D printing center or a call center of a foreign company can give the affected community an economic effect commensurate with a mini-production, or create more jobs than an agricultural company.
And this approach can significantly accelerate the course of the country's recovery and turn Ukraine from a war zone into a springboard for the birth of modern innovative solutions and solutions for reasonable specialization, which will reverse the lost human capital and ensure a great civilizational leap with the help of local changes in the economy of the de-occupied territories.
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