The roundtable entitled "Business-clusters: boosters of development of Ukrainian regions" was held by a business school at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
Its participant was one of the authors of the business-cluster development methodology, Ifor Ffowcs-Williams's (New Zealand) — an international expert having experience in studies and development of clusters in over 50 countries. He is also a founder of The Competitiveness Institute (TCI) — the world's largest network of professionals engaged in competition ability.
During the discussion of opportunities to develop business-clusters in Ukraine, Viktor Halasiuk assured that in the context of our state the introduction of clusters was the only possibility to combat poverty and successfully hold the decentralization. "If we transfer the authorities to the local level, first of all we have to take care of creation of instruments to attract investments, creation of jobs and ensure welfare of the communities. Only after that the decentralization would have some sense. Otherwise there'll be no difference where the tax is gathered — at the top or and the local level — if there is nothing to pay that tax from," the people's deputy said.
Halasiuk said Ukraine has to attentively and rapidly learn experience of the countries having real results in successful use of such instrument as business-clusters in their economic development. "Turkey, Poland, and Slovakia have managed to combat poverty and rapidly raise the level of welfare of their citizens using the clusters to create new jobs, attract investments — not speculative ones — not simply financial ones, but the ones to the real sector of economy and high-technologies. They used that mechanism to raise the exportation of technologies, to move upwards in the chain of creation of added value," the Chairperson of the Committee said. Analyzing the experience of the abovementioned countries, the people's deputy noted that today Istanbul "is a live, powerful and economically and intellectually-rich city" with 40% of Turkish industry in it.
Summarizing, Viktor Halasiuk informed that the model of industrial policy elaborated and approved by the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Industrial Policy and Entrepreneurship in many aspects is based on the experience presented by the founder of the Competitiveness Institute. He added that thanks to the adopted Law of Ukraine "On peculiarities of state regulation of activity of entrepreneurs related to sale and exportation of timber" "we have all opportunities to create a cluster of woodworking and furniture industry.