Distinguished colleagues! Fellow Ukrainians!

We begin our regular meeting of the Government.

Ukraine is moving step by step towards enhancing and revitalising our economy.

Our goal is to ensure the economy's self-sufficiency and increase domestic resources that finance the army.

To this end, we promote priority industries, including the agricultural sector.

Today, agricultural producers are generating a significant share of Ukrainian exports. In 2023, it will be more than 60% of all goods.

Thanks to the sea corridor, more than a thousand ships have already transported about 30 million tonnes of cargo from Black Sea ports to almost 40 countries. These are mainly agricultural exports.

The State, in turn, continues to help Ukrainian farmers at all levels.

Since the beginning of this year, banks have issued almost UAH 20 billion in loans to agricultural enterprises, including UAH 6.3 billion under the "5-7-9" program.

UAH 723 million has been invested in horticulture and greenhouse farming under the eRobota program over the past year and a half.

Today we are to improve the mechanism of work of this program.

The State covers 70% of the project cost, the rest (30%) is financed by an entrepreneur. Provided that a sufficient number of jobs are created and other conditions are met, the money will not need to be returned.

Authorized banks will then monitor the targeted use of the funds.

All this will allow farmers to more effectively and rationally use the support provided by the State.

We launched eRobota in July 2022, and since then the State has invested over UAH 7 billion in small and medium-sized businesses. This is one of the most successful entrepreneurship support programs.

In addition to gardens and greenhouses, it includes microgrants for starting and developing business, grants for processing, and a veteran component.

Veteran businesses have a special place here. So far, defenders and their families have received 280 grants worth UAH 116 million.

We need to ensure that each of our defenders has the opportunity to set up their own business after returning from the frontline.

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Another programme that is critical for businesses, communities, and security is humanitarian demining.

Since the beginning of 2024, 53,000 hectares of land have been surveyed in Ukraine, and 95% of them have been returned to agricultural use.

Now we will have another important tool - compensation to farmers for the purchase of demining services.

Initially, we talked about UAH 2 billion for this programme, but we managed to increase it. Now the state budget provides for UAH 3 billion.

80% of the cost of demining will be compensated. Services will be procured through Prozorro, thereby minimising corruption risks and creating competition in the humanitarian demining market.

We expect that the first such procurement will take place in May-June this year.

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The third sowing campaign during the full-scale war has started in most regions.

68,000 hectares of grain and legumes have been sown.

Last year, farmers sowed 12.75 million hectares of spring crops. We expect that this year's sown areas will not decrease.

This is crucial for strengthening our economy, for both Ukraine's and the world's food security.

We continue the Grain from Ukraine programme initiated by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Recently, 7,600 tonnes of Ukrainian flour arrived in Sudan, and 26,000 tonnes were shipped to Nigeria. Earlier, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Yemen received food support from Ukraine.

Even despite a difficult and exhausting war, Ukraine remains one of the guarantors of global food security.

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Another major area of focus for our economy is attracting private investment.

Currently some of the most promising sectors for investment are the defense industry, agricultural processing, natural resource development, energy and digital technologies.

The Government is implementing a range of measures to create a favorable investment environment. These include public-private partnerships, industrial parks, deregulation, digitalization, and risk insurance.

Besides, the Government's UkraineInvest office is working to support large investment projects.

Today, we are to approve the procedure and methodology for assessing projects with significant investments.

We specify a number of parameters, introduce a simplified procedure, as well as the procedure for finalizing the submitted documents.

UkraineInvest is currently accompanying investment projects totaling EUR 1.36 billion. We expect that there will be many more.

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We will keep working to build a strong economy. This is one of the keys to our victory and recovery.

I am grateful to everyone for joining our efforts.

Thank you for your attention!

Glory to Ukraine!