“Now is the right time to invest”

1.1 trillion, ie $1,100,000,000,000: According to the Kyiv School of Economics, this is how much it will cost to rebuild a broken Ukraine. This does not include the damage that Vladimir Putin’s (70) troops will cause in the country. Not to mention the decades-long weakening of Ukrainian society, which has lost half a generation to the war.

But no sign of a break. “This is exactly the right time to invest in Ukraine,” says Anna Derevyanko (46) to Blick. “No one knows what 2023 will bring. But I guarantee you: there is huge potential in Ukraine.”

Derevyanko is the head of the European Business Association, an association of nearly 1,000 Ukrainian and international companies. And she co-founded the Global Business for Ukraine initiative, a project launched in Switzerland that aims to show foreign companies what Ukraine can do: cheap, well-trained labor in the middle of Europe and a lot of experience in extremely difficult conditions, for which you have to constantly work on new solutions.

Even digital pioneer Estonia is impressed

Nowhere is it easier to set up a company than in Ukraine, says Derevyanko. “The war has accelerated many processes. What used to take months is now online within minutes.”

This is made possible by the “Diia” app, which aims to digitize all government services in Ukraine by 2024. Getting married, filing a tax return, issuing a passport or just setting up a company: everything is possible 24 hours a day with one app.

“We are like Israel,” says Anna Derevyanko. “Tough neighborhood, constant war – and maybe that’s why a thriving IT industry.” The Ukrainian IT industry will grow by 25 percent in 2022.

Claude Wild (58), Swiss ambassador in Kiev, says: “Ukraine is far ahead of Switzerland in terms of digitization.” But without the start-up funding that Switzerland gave to the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation (which has existed since 2019), things would look very different. “Switzerland made digitization possible in the first place,” says Wild to Blick.

Refugees from Ukraine as an anti-corruption measure

But what about corruption? The organization Transparency International still considers Ukraine the second most corrupt country in Europe (after Russia). “That’s right,” says Iaroslava Savastieieva (33), co-founder of Global Business for Ukraine. But the fight against corruption will be won. “Our digitization offensive ensures that corrupt officials can no longer play their game.”

In addition, Ukraine wants to join the EU. “That is why the bad apples in the state are now being radically sorted out,” says Savastieieva. “And then there are the experiences of the seven million Ukrainians who had to flee and temporarily live in other countries.” They now see how things are going elsewhere. “After they return, they will no longer tolerate corruption in Ukraine,” she said.

Source: Blick