Ukraine after the war, is there a chance for recovery?!

A sleepless night awaiting the results of the meeting between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump with EU leaders once again prompted reflections on how much we all desire an end to the war, but, at the same time, we are still thinking too little about what awaits us after its conclusion.

Considering the global conjuncture and new trends in relations introduced by the American administration, where every assistance must be paid for, it is unlikely that Ukraine will find it significantly easier. Yes, shelling and mass killings of people will stop. But what list of economic and social challenges awaits us, and how exactly to solve the problems that will come into the life of a war-torn country?!.. – this definitely needs to be addressed today.

In all my television broadcasts, I always try to convey to the audience the idea that the main trials for Ukraine will begin precisely after the war ends.

As strange as it may seem, as soon as the hostilities and the active phase of confrontation subside and Ukraine gradually begins to disappear from the top positions of the world news feed, macro-financial assistance from donor countries will begin to decrease, most material and technical assistance programs will be curtailed, and free funds will be directed by European partners to solve internal problems of their own countries and their residents – whose interests and well-being are priorities for politicians as they are their voters and on whose will depends whether politicians will be elected for the next terms of their activity.

I am sure that there will be those who will appeal to me by reminding me that they promised significant investments in the restoration of our economy. But: “to promise is not to marry,” isn’t it?!..

Well, they promised Ukraine security guarantees and inviolability of borders according to the Budapest Memorandum, and what happened?!

They promised not to buy Russian energy carriers, and what is the result?.. – only by the end of 2024, the EU paid Russia about 21.9 billion euros for them. Or, just last month, the total payment for energy carriers from Hungary, France, Slovakia, Belgium, and Spain amounted to = 1 billion 100 million euros. Hungary “distinguished itself” the most – 485 million euros paid for oil and gas to the aggressor country.

Accordingly, it is definitely not worth taking foreign promises as a constant and hoping for significant help or investments from anyone. We need to build our country’s economy ourselves, and this is only possible in a strong country where there is a clear vertical of power, a powerful “security triad”: military, economic, energy, and where society is united around a common idea of national development of Ukraine accepted by the majority of the population.

Only a strong state can provide Ukrainian citizens with jobs, a decent level of income, housing, rebuilt infrastructure, and do everything to ensure that all those returning from the front feel maximally protected and provided with social support programs, and those who were forced to emigrate – return with their families to Ukraine to guaranteed build their future here, in their Homeland.

In order for the Government to implement one of the key points of its action program, presented by its head Yulia Svyrydenko, which is the return of our citizens from abroad and providing them with housing, work, and social support, it is necessary to remember that the State is the largest (!) employer in the country. It is also necessary to remember that before the war, it provided 715,000 jobs for its citizens in the “state enterprises” sector, and that the total value of these enterprises at the end of 2021 was estimated at 1.7 trillion hryvnias.

Undoubtedly, a large number of them generated not only profits but also losses. And here, the war also made its adjustments – a certain number of enterprises remained in the occupied territories, some of them, along with assets, were simply destroyed and annihilated by the enemy, and others, for objective reasons, worsened the efficiency of their activities.

At the same time, the share of finances generated by state enterprises still remains significant, as does the number of assets they own – from huge granite quarries to an impressive amount of real estate in the historical parts of the country’s settlements.

And the question of what exactly to do with these state-owned companies in this context, which still provide hundreds of thousands of jobs and simultaneously several tens of percent of the national GDP, and how to properly manage them – we also need to decide.

The most widely circulated opinion on this issue, formed by a certain cohort of experts, is: Sell everything, Privatize, Transfer to private owners. Sounds good. Sounds like…

But in reality, how many positive examples of privatization of former state enterprises have we, as a society, seen?.. Where are all those huge industrial complexes and factories that we inherited from past generations?.. How many new high-tech innovative enterprises have been built “from scratch” during the years of independence?.. Why are there now shopping centers where there used to be factories?.. – “buy/sell,” and mainly goods of foreign origin.

The worst thing the State can do today is to succumb to provocations of a new division of state enterprises and their sale for pennies to new fraudsters and financial speculators. Instead of selling these enterprises for 15-20% of their real value, the funds for which will immediately disappear into the bottomless barrel of the state budget and be squandered, everything must be done to make them work effectively, create new jobs, introduce new technologies, pay decent salaries to employees and taxes to the country’s budget.

Undoubtedly, there are a number of enterprises that simply need to be liquidated. And precisely for this, the Ministry of Economy has repeatedly returned to the issue of conducting so-called triage, when, based on a thorough analysis of the activities of state enterprises, they are clearly divided into those that remain 100% under state control and those that are subject to corporatization. But the main thing in this process is, as they say in Ukraine, “not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.” It is extremely important to introduce private-public partnership programs where the state, while simultaneously ensuring conditions and a legal basis for the effective functioning of the country’s economy as a whole, transfers its state assets to private business for long-term effective use in order to obtain significant financial profit from this. At the same time, in case of inefficient or improper use of the transferred state enterprises, it can either return them to ownership or transfer them to another investor.

Let’s recall, for example, the energy sector of our country, which was irrevocably transferred to the ownership of Ukrainian oligarchs. Did it become fundamentally more high-tech, and the provision of services to the population more convenient?.. Or was the monopoly destroyed, and the population got the opportunity to buy electricity from different suppliers?.. Definitely not, but its cost is constantly growing, and after the war, it will be indexed towards a sharp increase even more, as will all utility expenses in general. This decision will be pushed through the Government by 101% by both local oligarchs and foreign owners of Ukrainian enterprises in the energy sector, who own them through their offshore companies.

Again, to determine the issue of effective management of state enterprises, it is necessary to define clear criteria/signs of their priority for the development of a particular industry, as well as their importance for a separate sector of the economy or the State as a whole. It is also necessary to decide which of the lists, which form the lists of strategic enterprises not subject to privatization and enterprises that need to be finally corporatized, and which one should be assigned to, because their future and development success will depend on it.

For example, the state joint-stock company (SJSC) “Automobile Roads of Ukraine”, whose founder and 100% shareholder is the state represented by the State Agency of Automobile Roads of Ukraine, is included in the list of particularly important economic entities of the state sector of the economy, but at the same time is absent from the list of state-owned objects that are of strategic importance for the economy and security of the state. Accordingly, when determining the development strategy of the specified state enterprise at the level of the relevant ministry and the issue of allocating funds by the Government for the implementation of priority state programs for the reconstruction of the country after the war, various systemic errors may be made with a loss of efficiency in its activities.

At the same time, at the level of operational activity, the management of state enterprises should also systematically work on studying the possibility of effective global asset management and preventing cases of their banal theft and removal from the list of state property with the participation of directors of individual enterprises included in their structure.

For example, recently, the management of the mentioned state joint-stock company managed to prevent an attempt to illegally withdraw assets into private ownership. The state assets included two granite quarries located in Transcarpathia, which have large reserves of stone extremely necessary for the reconstruction of the country. I am sure that law enforcement officers will have a fruitful conversation with the directors of the subsidiary enterprises of SJSC “Automobile Roads of Ukraine” who will have to explain on what grounds the equipment for crushed stone extraction was transferred to a private company and where large reserves of finished products disappeared and how such production could be made unprofitable and bring companies to bankruptcy.

Accordingly, a properly established and transparent system of managing state companies, along with an effective fight against corruption and bribery, should become instruments of their effective activity for the benefit of our society.

Moreover, there are also many examples of effective cooperation between the public sector and international business companies. For example, the well-known European corporation and aircraft manufacturer “Airbus”, where among the shareholders, along with investment funds and private investors, at various times one could see both the French Government and state-owned companies of France, Germany, and Spain. Also, the French Government can be found among the largest shareholders of the automotive giant “Renault Group” corporation.

That is why, building a strong country, we need to study and implement positive cases of public-private partnership of international companies, and not examples of post-Soviet plunder of state property and embezzlement of assets created by the people of Ukraine.