October 22 Round table “The future of industrial parks in the capital: partnerships for development”

A favourable geographical location, large areas of former plants, factories and enterprises, and high workforce potential. These are the main preconditions that will help turn Kyiv and the region into a leader in the development of industrial parks in Ukraine. This was discussed during the round table “The future of industrial parks in the capital: partnerships for development”, held on October 22 at the Kyivinform press centre. According to the head of the Institute of reintegration, rehabilitation and professional development of veterans “Architecture of Resilience” at KNUBA, Artem Honcharenko, 13 industrial parks have already been registered in the Kyiv region today. He added that every hectare of an industrial park can provide up to 50 highly productive jobs, drawing on local talent. And that means substantial tax revenues for the budget. Because even the registration of a single enterprise creates at least 3-5 jobs — from a director and an accountant to occupational safety specialists. That automatically brings revenues to the budget through taxes and the military levy. And every hryvnia of state investment in infrastructure generates five to six hryvnias of private investment. Artem Honcharenko noted that the development of industrial parks would be helped by combining education and production. And he proposed creating industrial clusters together with leading universities — KNUBA, KPI, NUBiP and others. The head of the Institute of Veterans shared his vision of how virtual industrial parks for IT and the creative industries can support the involvement of veterans who have a disability as a result of the war. Veterans could work, for example, in IT, design or video editing without having to travel to an office. Participants in such online parks would receive all the preferential conditions, including duty-free import of equipment and exemption from VAT, and would save from 10 to 40% of the cost of the equipment. This is a path to the development of the market, to profits for investors and to higher wages for employees. According to the expert, a partnership between the state, business and the community can be based on joint financing. That is, the state covers up to 50% of infrastructure costs, and for de-occupied territories this share can rise to 80%. The role of local communities is to provide active support, from building access roads to organising communication with foreign investors. To make the prospect of working in industrial parks more attractive, Artem Honcharenko proposes supplementing them with residential development. Renting on preferential terms would save employees time on commuting to work and money. The head of the Institute of Veterans stressed that numerous investors will come as soon as the airspace of Ukraine becomes safe. And with them will come big money, and the large-scale reconstruction of the country will begin.