“Political parties, movements, and leaders must take business interests into account. If a government adopts anti-market decisions, the country goes downhill in terms of economy,” Dmytro Shvets, chairman of the Business Council of Ukraine, says.
Prices are rising not just for bread but other foods, so “there was no need to add the political situation to this state of affairs.” This is the market — market mechanisms that “with one decision are simply being violated.” Shvets is referring to the cabinet decision that bread prices should not increase. Now bakery plants are suffering because they won’t make any profits. “It turns out that they banned price increases, although higher prices for raw materials were the obvious results of bad harvests, so now agricultural producers are suffering losses because they can’t sell their grain for export even though contracts have been signed.” If the government makes state purchases next year and there is enough grain, this will be a good sign. It will mean that the government has learned its lesson from this situation.
Commenting on the current situation in Ukraine, Shvets said: “Of course, the political crisis in Ukraine is having a negative impact on the business climate and the economic situation. However, I cannot say that an economic crisis is looming, although there is no positive development and that’s a fact.” This businessman believes that Ukraine has had several opportunities to show economic growth, but for a number of reasons did not take advantage of them. During the 2006 parliamentary elections “a number of businessmen were hopeful that Ukraine would finally have stability and a stable government for a long period of time. But the government itself spoiled everything by not conducting a constructive dialog with business.”
Excessive political interference in the economic sphere is complicating the situation not only in Ukraine. “Russia is Ukraine’s biggest partner and investor. I think that all our economic wars are political complications that occurred after the Orange Revolution. I think that business must be separated from politics. This is not the case right now and both our government and Russia’s must understand this,” Shvets added.
The chairman of the business council has his own recipes for success: “To avoid such wars, businessmen must have the opportunity to purchase businesses in Russia, become stockholders of Russian companies, just as Russian businessmen must have an opportunity to buy interests and businesses here.” Shvets is convinced that if Russian companies owned Ukraine’s metallurgical complex, they would be interested in supplying gas to Ukraine at low costs. The political struggle must not involve business, not even in words: “After Yulia Tymoshenko’s political declarations in 2005 some Russian businessmen were prepared to fold up production in Ukraine. Now we’re facing elections, and once again there is no telling which political force will win.”
Shvets explains the large number of problems that have arisen between business and government by the simple fact that information is not reaching the government: “We know that the council of entrepreneurs was abolished, but I’m sure that if Viktor Fedorovych (Yanukovych) received information from business circles, he would make some decisions.”
