[1]To foster the Ukrainian economic development, the government and business must pursue active and mutually advantageous cooperation, maintains Mr. Firtash.
“There are a lot of issues which investors are unable to address on their own. However, we can come with an initiative to the governor or to central power authorities and explain that we are building an X number of enterprises, we are creating an X number of jobs, and the budget will gain an X amount of tax gains,” said Mr. Firtash at his meeting with the administration and about 200 business people of Nikolaev region.
“For example, there is a shortage of grain elevators and storage facilities in Nikolaev. A bypass road construction is a burning priority but private investors cannot build it, it’s the government’s job. But we are prepared to go ahead and build reloading facilities creating new jobs which at the end of the day will increase the municipality’s tax receipts to pay salaries to budget-dependent employees and pensions to the elderly, while your job will be building a bypass road and a railroad lay-by,” suggested Mr. Firtash.
He further noted that developing such sort of cooperation is a strategic goal for the FEU. “We do not advocate somebody’s personal interests at the Federation, we are creating an organization which must become a platform for the entire business,” commented Dmitry Firtash.
The FEU President also reminded that the Federation has already signed a series of cooperation agreements: with the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, with the State Tax Service, State Customs Service and a number of state committees.
“We are having the government’s ultimate understanding of how our cooperation will proceed. Owing to our joint efforts, the government is now well informed about our priorities and our problems. We are not interested in criticizing the government, we are rather interested in pursuing a dialog to make sure that government decision makers have an alternative source of information,” stated Mr. Firtash. He is confident that the utmost efficiency may be achieved if the FEU’s operation will be focused on systemic problems. “At the end of the last year, there we holdups in our railroad shipments which affected all of us. This question is now solved. It turned out that the Federation is capable of addressing such matters and the government is ready to listen to the business’ voice. It’s not an insurmountable problem and all in all, there are no problems we couldn’t have solved,” stressed Mr. Firtash.
The entrepreneur has been consistently arguing that the government cannot turn a deaf ear to business. “Politics is quite important. But the life proves that business is yet more important because business offers jobs, provides social stability and replenishes the budget,” maintains Dmitry Firtash.