THE PATIENT IS MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE
There are now twenty-three enterprises of various forms of ownership licensed to produce televisions in Ukraine. Yet, most of them use essential components made by well known foreign firms. In other words, a Ukrainian TV set manufactured by so-called “screwdriver technology” is, to quote a Soviet-era clichО, an “internationalist.”
Viacheslav Petiak, marketing manager of the Khmelnytsky-based Novator Company, says that by all accounts there is no such thing as a Ukrainian television set. Certain components are imported and used for final (large-unit) assembly. In order to have a full-fledged production cycle, the state should support the national manufacturer. Yet, according to The Day’s experts, the Ukrainian Television Set Program exists on paper only: the state offers manufacturers no concrete assistance. As a result, practically all the plants that used to make TV sets have ceased to exist, and televisions are now mainly assembled at newly created production facilities.
This is quite natural, for it is easier to set up a new state-of-the-art facility than to refurbish an existing one. So post-Soviet plants, now eking out a miserable existence, have switched over to other products, far removed from television.
Meanwhile, the West has already switched to manufacturing liquid crystal and plasma televisions. But according to Mr. Petiak, Ukraine may never be able to develop a television of its own because the long-term failure to channel funds to this sector has caused a hopeless technological lag. Actually, this is a typically universal process: there are three or four leaders that possess modern technologies, while the remaining manufacturers, unable to make cathode-ray tubes, have to purchase circuit plates and manufacture televisions of “their own.” In other words, a few manufacturers hold sway over the worldwide and national markets.
ONE-OFF IMPORT
Yet, despite its appalling technological lag, Ukraine is managing not only to assemble but also export its TV sets. Preliminary data of the Ministry for Industrial Policies indicate that 395,277 Ukrainian- made televisions saw the light of day in 2003 against 159,091 in 2002. Moreover, in the first two months of 2004 alone, enterprises of various forms of ownership turned out 79,622 television receivers, three times as many as in the same period last year. So the impression is that production facilities are not standing idle, especially since the above-mentioned ministry is lobbying on behalf of the national manufacturer’s interests. First of all, import duty rates on foreign televisions have been raised; meanwhile, the import duty on components produced outside Ukraine has been reduced from 30% to 10%. The law “On the 2002 Budget of Ukraine” even canceled the privileges that had been granted to foreign-invested joint ventures. Nevertheless, according to the State Customs Service, Ukraine imported 41,480 color televisions in 2002. At the same time, this country managed to export only 1,290 color television sets to such countries as Russia, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Germany, Taiwan, and Cyprus. Still, this may be considered a success because only fourteen Ukrainian-made TV sets were exported in 1999 (or at least the available statistics say so). As for the domestic market, experts believe it will be rather problematic to manufacture televisions unless there is a chain of retail outlets to sell a certain number of them. Today, it is never advisable to produce such sophisticated and costly products “for long storage,” and especially never in a market environment.
A SYMBOL OF WELL-BEING
It is not that easy for the national manufacturer to reestablish friendly relations with the consumer. Potential buyers did not notice the birth of a new Ukrainian TV set, the same way that they failed to notice the death of the old one about ten years ago, when they were in dire financial straits. The man in the street is convinced that only foreign manufacturers can satisfy his quality and design requirements, etc. For example, Candidate of Sciences (Psychology) Olha Petrunko, Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Social and Political Psychology of Ukraine is convinced that this kind of attitude toward the quality of Ukrainian- made equipment is quite logical.
Indeed, even such things as at least a 5% price cut and a foreign-looking design cannot bail out the national TV set. At the same time, a deep-rooted conditional reflex makes the Ukrainian customer buy a Japanese, Korean, or even Indonesian television. The common excuse is: “I’m not rich enough to spend money on cheap things.” Naturally, everyone wants to invest in the newest, most beautiful, and most progressive things. So according to People’s Deputy Mykola Shulha, who has a Ph.D. in sociology, the buyer’s stereotype of the quality of Ukrainian television products is not far from the truth. This stereotype can only be done away with by joint, concerted effort on the part of the government, researchers, manufacturers, market study experts, and advertisers. In practice, however, things usually work in the opposite manner. For instance, in Khmelnytsky, where Ukrainian televisions are made, the civic fathers, marking a certain occasion, presented a local educational institution with... a foreign-made TV set.
