Ukraine needs 37 years to catch up with Romania, Poland under current circumstances - finance minister
MOSCOW. July 14 (Interfax) - Ukraine needs 37 years to catch up with Poland and Romania under the current circumstances in the attraction of private and public investment and the amount of investments, Ukrainian media said, citing Finance Minister Sergei Marchenko.
Marchenko made the statement at the Beyond Reconstruction: Sparking Growth through Business Dynamism workshop at the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC2025) in Rome.
"That is too long, and those countries, I mean Poland and Romania, will not be waiting for our economy to catch up with their level," he said.
It will take 15 years to catch up with Poland and Romania if the Ukrainian economic growth accelerates to 5%, Marchenko said.
"In order to deal with this issue, we need to think on how to draw private investment in Ukraine, because public investments alone are unable to solve our problems. Our budget has very limited resources, and our partners cannot help us draw enough public funds to our market. We should forget about huge public funds that could be brought to Ukraine," he said.
Therefore, conditions should be identified and created for drawing private funds to Ukraine, and a way of drawing new technologies and raising productivity needs to be found, as well, Marchenko said.
As to other hindrances, he said that, since the beginning of independence, Ukraine had built "a very special economy, an economy based on the oligarchic model, when a handful of families govern our country and dominate in various spheres," he said.
"They have privatized every existent facility and business in order to get access to resources, businesses, the decision-making process in parliament, and public funds. These are consequences of the events that took place at the beginning of 2000. Let us admit this and make the facts public. [...] We will not break the vicious circle and will end up with the issue again and again unless we solve these problems," Marchenko said.
