On Good Luck Island

In 1994, Philip Morris acquired the controlling shares of the Kharkiv Tobacco Factory and started to remodel it. With $50 million in investment, the factory turned into an island of world capitalism, a high-tech enterprise that produced almost 11 billion cigarettes last year.

What has American capitalism brought Kharkiv? Good cigarettes for all smokers: even Vatra is now far better. Good jobs for thousands of Kharkiv residents, with regular monthly wages averaging UAH 1300. In addition, they get daily meal tickets and two cartons of cigarettes a month. Huge budget revenues: the factory paid taxes and made compulsory payments worth UAH 170 million last year and UAH 55 million in the first quarter of this year. Last year, the Kharkiv Tobacco Factory had contractual relations with 613 Ukrainian enterprises which earned UAH 35 million for the work done. This means several thousand workers had jobs. George Fahra, managing director of Kharkiv Tobacco Factory Ltd., summed up the past five years, saying that not a single dollar had gone abroad. Everything is being invested in the manufacture of cigarettes in Kharkiv and of chocolate at Trostianets (Korona, the Taste of Desire).