WASHINGTON – Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Monday that his country needs more bilateral trade and investment from the U.S. as it moves to privatize the energy sector and shore up its sagging economy.
“The theme is not to make Ukrainian military durable and strong,” said Yatsenyuk. “We need to have a very strong Ukrainian economy, to bring Ukraine people back to work, to increase wages and salaries and to have US investments into the Ukraine economy.
At the first U.S.-Ukraine business forum, co-hosted Monday by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, government and business leaders from both countries outlined ideas for American businesses to participate in Ukraine’s agriculture, energy and infrastructure as the country undergoes large-scale privatization of state-owned enterprises.
The International Monetary Fund in March approved a $17.5 billion loan program for Ukraine, which is one of the largest programs in IMF’s history, to help the Ukrainian economy.
“Sometimes privatization is over politicized, but we need to launch a large-scale of privatization,” Yatsenyuk said. “To overhaul the public sector, we need to have a very strong and modern private sector. So we need to get your experience and your technology.”
The government has already begun a number of changes that privatize the energy sector.
“Key of the reforms that have been passed so far is the energy sector reform,” said Ukraine’s economic development minister,” said Aivaras Abromaviciusm, Ukraine’s minister of economic development and trade. “We undertook a very bold and extremely risky move to raise tariffs by 400%.”
“Ukraine has been challenged simultaneously by the Russian aggression and by the sharp economic fall,” he said. “We had dreadful GDP numbers in the first quarter, but I believe the worst macroeconomic financial data is already behind us.”
Ukraine’s economy shrank by 18% in the first quarter compared to the same period of 2014.
The government is simultaneously addressing two connected challenges — financial stabilization and structural reforms — to create a business-friendly fiscal regulatory regime that could encourage investment, according to Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine’s minister of finance.
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