Ukrainian Premier Mykola Azarov has charged the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade with analyzing the book-publishing market and the book trade in Ukraine.
"I charge the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade with analyzing our book-publishing market and the book trade," the premier said during a government meeting on Wednesday.
"Networks for book distribution set up at a market, as a rule, aren’t perfect, and prices are prohibitive for customers. This is wrong. Books must be accessible and Ukrainian books have to be promoted by the government," he said.
Azarov said that attention should be paid to the modernization of libraries, in particular, to matching the demand of libraries to the plans of the publishing houses.
For this purpose, he ordered Minister of Education, Science, Youth and Sports Dmytro Tabachnyk to elaborate a project to modernize Ukrainian libraries – primarily school ones.
On Tuesday Premier Azarov visited the Kyiv International Book Exhibition where he bought a couple of books, but during the meeting with journalists he complained about the high cost and emphasized the need to create a mechanism for making the Ukrainian books more accessible.
