Ukraine has opened its first support center for small and medium-sized businesses in Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million people located 460 kilometers to the east of Kyiv.
Called Diya Business, the center will provide business consultations, workshops, forums and training programs to support local businesses and help entrepreneurs succeed, the President’s Office said in a statement. The centers are financially supported by Visa and Huawei.
“Small and medium businesses suffer the most today, as they can’t work and don’t have big reserves…and business means jobs and taxes,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said, according to the statement.
The center, which launched at the start of this month, is the first of its kind, but not the last. According to Mykhalio Fedorov, the minister of digital transformation, the government is planning to open two more in other cities. On May 28, the Diya Business online portal announced that it would also be possible to receive free online consultations.
“Our dream is to have such support centers for entrepreneurs throughout the country. We will do everything to make entrepreneurship a national idea,” Fedorov said, according to the statement.
Small businesses in Ukraine were hit extremely hard by quarantine restrictions put in place due to the coronavirus pandemic.
On May 6, 200 Ukrainian entrepreneurs blocked Hrushevskoho Street in the center of Kyiv and demanded the government provide support for them and ease quarantine restrictions. Earlier, on May 2, around 100 restaurant owners set up tables and served food outside the President’s Office, demanding that the government lift restrictions on restaurants in order to save their livelihoods.
As noted by Artem Kokhanevich, CEO of GigaCloud, in an interview with Interfax Ukraine, quarantine measures hit small and medium enterprises in the service, trade, transport and tourism sectors the hardest.
On June 16, the Ukrainian parliament passed legislation to support culture, creative industries and tourism. It was estimated that these businesses would face between Hr 5.8-8.7 billion ($214.6-321.9 million) in losses between March 16 and May 1, 2020.
On July 1, the Ukrainian government signed an agreement with the European Union to receive 20 million euros in aid through the EU4Business initiative, which supports small and medium-sized enterprises in Ukraine. The program aims to help businesses by providing digital tools, business integration strategies, greater access to European markets and consulting services.
