(Kyiv Post staff) – Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said the government needs to stimulate investment in its vast steel industry in order to remain competitive on world markets.
Steel, along with chemicals, is one of Ukraine’s main exports, and the country’s economy is highly sensitive to fluctuations in global prices and demand. A drop in demand for steel in 2008 was a key factor in the depth of Ukraine’s economic crisis.
The technological backwardness of our industry is a death sentence for the country.”
– Mykola Azarov, prime minister of Ukraine.
“The technological backwardness of our industry is a death sentence for the country,” Azarov said on Jan. 5.
“If within the next few years we do not solve the problem of the innovative restructuring of this sector, the pace of advancement of metallurgical industries in the world will not leave any chance to native plants to hold their own on the market.”
He said the government should provide “essential help and maximum support” for investment projects in the steel sector.
The country’s steel plants are concentrated primarily under Russian ownership or in the hands of Rinat Akhmetov, the country’s richest man and a lawmaker from the Party of Regions, which backs President Viktor Yanukovych.
