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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Arizona Gives Jobs

30 November, 1999 - 00:00

A fourth ship in this year has slid off the ramp at the Leninska Kuznia Open Joint Stock Company. The ship’s name is the Arizona and has been built by request of Germany’s Schiffswerft Schlomer GmbH Co. KG in the record-breaking time of less than three months. Now it is heading for Kherson and then on to its port of destination, said company general director Petro Blyndar.

It turned out that the delivery of vessels to the clients is a no less labor intensive process than the construction proper: as navigation through the Danube is still blocked, the previous contract of Leninska Kuznia has still not been paid for, and ships now have to be delivered to Holland on large dry cargo ferries going around Europe.

Construction of the Arizona (worth of about DM 1 million) is more advantageous than previous contracts because from the very beginning it was financed by the client, which attracted loans for this purpose (primarily from Raiffeisenbank Ukraine). This demonstrates the degree of foreign companies’ confidence in the Ukrainian plant. Without doubt, such funding gives considerable advantages to the shipwrights, and Mr. Blyndar called this project a breakthrough in the domestic shipbuilding industry and not without reason.

People’s Deputy, Ukrprominvest general director, and honorary president of Leninska Kuznia Petro Poroshenko said that domestic shipbuilding is now booming basically because of the adoption of the law to support the shipbuilding industry, recently adopted by Verkhovna Rada. The law creates conditions for restructuring the tax arrears of enterprises in the sector and enhancing their investment attractiveness. The competitiveness of Ukrainian ships will also be significantly enhanced, because from now on the VAT on all operations relating to their construction will be zero.

Deputy Minister for Industrial Policy Vadym Liashchov, who attended the Arizona’s birth, said that Ukrainian shipbuilding will continue to be export-oriented (at least to 50% or 60%) in the future: even now orders are significant at about $500 million.

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