Prime Minister assures industrial development to entail a 5% economic growth

Industrial development in Ukraine, in particular in the mechanical engineering segment, will allow the economy to grow by at least 5%, said Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, opening the All-Ukrainian Conference "Strategic Directions of the Development of Mechanical Engineering in Ukraine: from Regional Initiatives to National Industrial Policy" in Kharkiv.

"We are talking about steady economic growth, and it requires the development of domestic machine manufacturing, innovations. Hence, we must create greater opportunities for such development to be efficient", stressed Volodymyr Groysman.

He accentuated that the present Ukraine has a unique chance to enter the world market with its product. "Ukraine's exports are increasing, the share of exports to EU countries is growing as well. We engage in vigorous activity to expand product markets, and it is vital to ensure our machine-building industry to take a worthy place among leading industries, as here we observe positive trends," the Head of Government said.

In the opinion of the Head of Government, Industry Development Committee set up last year acts as a tool for achieving the goal. "This is the platform for producing necessary solutions that we are capable to implement," said Volodymyr Groysman.

The participants of the meeting, among whom were Gov’t members and leaders of the major industrial enterprises of Ukraine, emphasized that it would be incorrect to consider Ukraine as an exclusively agrarian state. The agro-sector really represents a significant share of the economy, but having such enterprises like Turboatom or Electrotyazhmash, other companies, having a strong IT sector, it would be remiss if we would forget about industrial and innovative development as one another promising direction.

In the course of the discussion, the industrialists expressed a number of suggestions called to stimulate development. Among those are clear definition of industrial commodity nomenclature taking into account the demands of the market and scientific solutions, the processing of affordable lending opportunities for industrial enterprises and reasonable protectionism in the domestic market.

"We are talking about a 5% growth and joining the club of rich countries. And we should realize that 5% to GDP means 5 billion dollars to the economy per annum and 100 thousand new jobs per annum", said Anatolii Hirshfeld, Deputy Chairman of the Industry Development Committee.