The Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, Minister of Economic Development and Trade Mr.Kubiv held a meeting on stabilization of operation of industrial companies in Poltava region on 5^th of July. The subject of meeting is how to overcome decline in industrial sector and support leaders of domestic machine building industry. The conversation was meaningful because representatives of leading industrial companies of Poltava region such as “Ltava”, “KRCBW”, “RWP”, Khorol Mechanical Plant, etc. came to the meeting held in the cabinet of Ministers. General Director of “AutoKrAZ” Poman Chernyak was among managers invited to visit this meeting.  In his speech he told about alarming current situation at KrAZ, the company’s problems, decline in the industry negatively affecting the business of the automobile plant, absence of government support and other issues that make it impossible for the largest contributor to the budget of the region to be efficient in its activity and donate to various budgets.

 It should be mentioned that the residents of Poltava region did not come to the Cabinet of Ministers to complain or ask for help but came up with effective proposals how to improve the situation in the industry and get government support.  They offered to establish nation-wide program for support and development of industrial sector of economy because regional authorities exhausted all the possibilities to help industry at the regional level. For this purpose amendments to valid law such as Public procurement act of Ukraine are needed, for instance about granting preferences for domestic products   with local content of 50 percent at least.
Today procurement is done through competitive bidding; however it is possible to put in place bid offer assessment criterion as local content share, which should be 40 percent at least.  Profit tax relief for the plants implementing investment projects, investing into development, re-equipment and innovative manufacturing tehchnologies would be an effective support.

Current problem of scarcity of working capital could be resolved due to timely VAT and overpaid amount refund. Thus, the companies of Poltava region will get extra UAH 421m: UAH 11m – tax profit overpaid amount, UAH 310m – VAT refunded. The next proposal concerns easing of credits for the companies, to set the rate of 5-7% of interest p.a. or refund partially valid interest rates and to introduce government secured financing scheme.
As for public contracts the companies of Poltava region can fulfill them successfully. Products of “AutoKrAZ” can be used to build and reconstruct domestic roads and in other sectors of Ukrainian economy. страны.
 Top officials of the Cabinet of Ministers participated in discussion of the meeting agenda. Appropriate decisions were made after discussion and we hope they will help improve the situation in the industry and at “AutoKrAZ”.