MEDT of Ukraine developed strategic principles of economic growth of Ukraine – “Way to prosperity”. This document defines the most important principles for making all decisions on the state restructuring and reforms execution.

There are five principles: supremacy of law, fair competition, property rights protection, complete intolerance of corruption and inconsiderable in number but effective state machine.

“These principles are to be the basis of the state policy in economic sphere. Each draft law, each decision of the Cabinet of Ministers is to correspond to these criteria”, Aivaras Abromavičius, the Minister of economic development and trade of Ukraine, told. It appears to him that violation of these principles within the previous years of independence was the main reason for Ukraine not to fulfill within the recent two decades.

Even those right decisions made before were compromise or too slow that’s why there was no result. “Time for compromise decisions went by. Ukraine has to determine clearly the fundamentals of its policy. Our vision is based on economic freedom increase and this, in its turn, will bring to the economic growth and increase of life quality for each Ukrainian”, Aivaras Abromavičius told.

Ivan Miklos, the Senior Counselor of the Minister of economic development and trade of Ukraine and ex-Vice Prime-Minister of Slovakia, told: “There is a general consensus in Ukraine as to demand for reforms and the existing documents, such as Strategy 2010 or Coalition Agreement, give answers what to do. However there is still no common understanding how to do this. We developed this document to this end. All have to unite around these principles. The fact that less than 50 % of the governmental draft laws pass the Parliament now is the catastrophe”.

Experience and numerous stories of success of our neighbors proved such way efficiency. Countries of the former social camp - Poland, Slovakia and Baltic states - implemented deep system reforms, based on increasing of the economic freedom level. Now, in average, they have twice higher GDP per capita (purchasing power par), than those states where the economic freedom is limited. Ukraine so far belongs to the latter.

According to the Strategy authors, the high-priority task is macroeconomic stabilization of the country. Economy cannot develop and any potential of reforms is leveled without stable and steady state finances, predicted currency, low inflation and healthy bank sector.

However establishment of stable economic system without deep system reforms is impossible. That is why the authors propose immediate implementation of five key reforms, such as judicial and law enforcement systems reforms, state administration reform, taxation system reform, privatization and deregulation of business.

In case of successful implementation of these structural reforms on the basis of economic freedom principles the Strategy authors plan to achieve the following indices:

• To level up the rating of Ukraine in Corruption Perception Index by 50 points at least (from 142 in 2014)
• To create the most favorable taxation regime in the Central and Eastern Europe  
• To create the best regulation environment among CEE states  
• To double the GDP per capita in 15 years
• To provide with 8 billion of USD of direct foreign investments yearly within the next 5-10 years.

“Way to prosperity” Strategy was developed by a team of the MEDT with a support of the Senior Counselor Ivan Miklos who had been the Vice Prime-Minister on economic issues in Slovakia within 12 years, as well as leading economists of Glib Vyshlins’kyi and Olena Bilan. The main goal of the Strategy is acceleration of reforms and creation of a single vision of economic development. Except this the Strategy is to be a sample of correspondence to regulatory and legal acts to be created for the state economic development purposes. This document is not aimed at replacement or supplement of such documents as the European Association Agreement, Strategy 2020, Governmental Program 2015, Coalition Agreement or IMF Memorandum.

To download “Way to prosperity” text.

To view strategy presentation.