Like tax reform, for example

On February 12, Vice Premier Vasyl Rohovy and Finance Minister Ihor Yushko staged a news conference to sum up the visit by Ukraine’s delegation to the recent Davos forum in New York. Mr. Yushko told The Day that there were “more than twenty or so meetings with portfolio investors” (transnational corporations that invest in one country or another at the government level, proceeding from its macroeconomic indices — Author). Moreover, according to Mr. Rohovy, the delegation held a series of talks with US Assistant Secretary of Economy Aldonez, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Taylor, and World Bank Vice President Linn.

“Our country is little known on the world financial market and known on negatively,” Mr. Rohovy noted beginning the news conference. To prove the opposite or, as the Vice Premier put it, to let the world community know about the positive trends in Ukraine’s economy was the principal aim of the delegation. It is about these positive changes and indicators of the nation’s economy’s steady growth that the Vice Premier and the Finance Minister told reporters. Answering a question from The Day, Yushko stressed that the leading international agency, Moody’s, appraised this country’s investment climate as quite favorable for the post-Soviet area. So Ukraine (judging from such appraisals – Author) has every chance to move two points up in the list of mildly speaking not very investment-attractive countries.

But the actual results of the meetings and the very process of the dialog between the mammoths of the world financial market and representatives of the Ukrainian government remained behind the scenes despite reporters’ efforts. To be more exact, only the constructive side of the talks in New York was presented on Tuesday. And it looked really impressive. Yushko said, for instance, that the positive trends in our economy make it possible for us to talk with investors about lowering average interest rates from 11.5% to 10%: “There are serious reductions in the terms. Recently, twelve or eighteen months was not bad for us, but now we can enter ten year investment markets... We don’t need money soon and at any price. There won’t be any expensive short loans.”

Yet any serious influx of investment is out of question at the moment. “The most feasible option is to enter the loan market early next year. But we will prepare for it in the second half, possibly in the fall of this year,” Yushko said. According to him, Ukraine has “to give a few more positive signals to prove its economic growth.” One such “beacon” awaited by potential investors is, he maintained, tax reform.

Meanwhile, Rohovy said, the government will seek additional investment resources within the country.