New York, December 10 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The farming sector and related food and engineering, tourism and other services, logistics and infrastructure development have the highest growth potential in Ukraine, experts said at a roundtable entitled "Ukraine: opportunities and challenges" organized by the Financial Times with the Ukrainian Foundation for Effective Governance held in New York on Dec. 9.
"Ukraine has 30% of the world’s black soil and can provide sustenance for one billion people. Compared to Soviet times, beef production has fallen by 12 times, and pork output has plunged by seven times. Despite good harvests over the past several years, the yield is 2-2.5 times less than in Europe. There is fantastical potential," MP Borys Kolesnikov said.
He said that Ukrainians today consume half the amount of meat of European Union citizens, and the country imports 500,000 tonnes of meat each year.
"This is like Russia starting to import oil," he said.
He said that there are four obstacles today for the realization of the agricultural potential: insufficient protection of rights of landowners and investors; the non-obligatory work of the state with the farming sector; infrastructure obstacles, such as a lack of modern storage facilities or old machinery; smuggling and weak protection of the Ukrainian farming product exports.
"I invest and will invest in the food industry and agriculture. The door to the sector is open," Kolesnikov said.
Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy said that tourism is also an attractive sector in Ukraine. He said that Lviv over three years managed to increase the number of tourists to one million people, which exceeds the city’s population, and over the past year the growth was 40%.
The mayor said that domestic tourism has great prospects, as few Ukrainian travel around the country, as well as foreign tourism, as foreigners know little about Ukraine.
He said that it is profitable for the state to support the development of the sector, as it has a large financial and educational significance and helps fight unemployment.
"The state should understand that there is a need for decentralization. Local authorities should receive powers, and central power should leave only monitoring functions for itself," he said.
McKinsey&Company Senior Manager Elena Kuznetsova said that the mining and chemical complexes in the future have rather restricted growth potential, while the attractiveness of trade, the financial sphere and telecommunications is higher for investors.
