Ukraine may become appealing investment hub - presidential official

MOSCOW. Aug 21 (Interfax) - Ukraine possesses a number of advantages to attract substantial investments and localize the modern production of global brands, provided security guarantees and European Union membership, Ukrainian media quoted Rostislav Shurma, deputy chief of the Ukrainian presidential office, as saying during a national TV marathon.

Ukraine's good prospects in this field are particularly noticeable from its dialogue with Sweden, he said.

"Sweden has not only very good military technology, but primarily machine-building technology. It's a very broad range. Therefore, Sweden has the entire range of machine-building, a full portfolio, which is critically important for Ukraine's reconstruction, because what we will need above all is a huge amount of equipment, both for infrastructure and for building new enterprises and factories," Shurma said.

Such equipment is typically sold not just as engineering solutions only, but along with financial packages usually provided through export credit agencies, which is among the issues Ukraine and Sweden are addressing in negotiations now, he said.

"We're speaking of billions of U.S. dollars, but primary focus should be precisely on the private sector. Our job is to make it advantageous for companies to come to Ukraine. We have very skilled people and a broad range of mineral resources. We have every precondition for the full-scale relocation of production from Southeast Asia to Ukraine. The two key factors are security (accession to NATO) and accession to the EU (unhindered access to markets, the financing, and the set of reforms on which we're working now). This is actually a formula of major projects, major reconstruction, and a new economy," Shurma said.