The chairman of the newly created state agency with the name so difficult to pronounce —Derzhinvestproekt (State Investment Project) announced the launch of a campaign to “strengthen Ukraine’s investment image abroad.” “Among the planned events there is a road show – presentations of proposals for investment to Ukraine in 16 world’s major financial centers. This road show will offer investors ‘National Projects’ of the first wave, including LNG-Terminal project, Olympic Hope 2022, Clean City, Open World, Nature’s Energy, and a few other big projects, that will change depending on the interests of the region, where the show will be presented: America, Asia, Middle East, and Europe,” said Vladyslav KASKIV. Furthermore, as the chairman of the State Investment Project noted, Ukraine will be presented “in image publications on the boards of over 20 leading airlines, in the world’s best electronic and printed economic media, in visual advertising and a series of videos, that will run on the leading television channels, presenting the strong sides of the Ukraine’s investing climate: convenient access to the EU, Russia and Asia markets; experienced and highly educated human resources; priority branches of Ukraine’s economy and huge potential for agriculture businesses development.”
All these measures, according to the State Investment Project intentions, should improve the investment image of the country.
The goal is noble if it weren’t for a few “buts.”
It is uncomfortable now even to talk about the loss of Ukraine’s position on all world ratings. To the general drop in ratings of Reporters Without Borders, Freedom House, and Human Rights Watch we can add the index of the French agency Coface (specializing in investment ratings), which for the first time last year gave Ukraine the mark “D” (very bad). Global Wealth 2010 of the Swiss bank Credit Suisse declared Ukraine one of the poorest countries of Europe. According to the agency Maplecroft, Ukraine went down in the
Political Risk Index to the position of high risk. According to the World’s Bank, Ukraine ranks fifth in the world among the countries with the largest number of immigrants.
All of these are the ratings of year 2010. What will be the image “harvest” this year?
The amount of money allotted for the abovementioned “large-scale project” of the State Investment Project, taking into account the great losses of what should have the most value – reputation, is almost negligible – 47 million hryvnias. By the way, according to Kaskiv (cited by Ekonomichna Pravda), Ukraine spends paltry 0.013 percent of its budget (six million US dollars) for image-positioning.
But even this is not the point.
As Taras Shevchenko wrote “not so much enemies as good people.” About a year ago at a conference in London, which was devoted to issues of Ukraine’s investment attractiveness and was attended by numerous potential and actual investors, one could hear as some famous Ukrainian journalist, talk show host, while presenting Ukraine’s portrait, in such an easy manner said that Ukrainians haven’t yet made up their mind whether they had Holodomor or not.
Now it is the time to emphasize how much money Russia spends on its promotion every year – it is two billion dollars. That is 333(!) times more than Ukraine does. What does Russia spend it on? Apparently, they spend it on colored candy wrappers for aircrafts as well, but above all – on large-scale cultural projects in Europe’s leading cultural capitals and on establishing their own historical (un)truth. The connection with the investment attractiveness is direct here.
However, according to witnesses of the recent investment forum in Sochi, the situation with investments in Russia is not all that good. Although, according to the report of the reputable company Ernst & Young, in the period from 2006 through 2010 Russia ranked first in Central and Eastern Europe for the number of investments (16 percent).
Crucially important for Ukraine is a different fact: Poland has the same percentage of investments. The image of this country is a complex and long-term work for self improvement, democratization, turning to its civilized face and its roots – all of this made it possible for Poland to quickly and almost painlessly move from a state of post Soviet anabiosis to a cohort of successful EU members. It also makes it possible now for Poland to absolutely lawfully and fairly preside over the Council of the European Union and receive 16 percent of investments to their country.
The most convincing promoting factors at the international level for Ukraine were gaining of independence and the Orange Revolution. It proves that the most optimum image strategy (at least in our case) is turning back to country’s European face, democratization, transparency, and openness.
Meanwhile, on The Day of presentation of Ukraine’s PR campaign the world’s media once again showed Yulia Tymoshenko on the dock and the EU representatives again spoke about Ukraine’s European prospects in an elusive manner. The good geographical location, large employment potential, fertile land, and good economic traditions of Ukraine get lost against this background.
As for the rest, the idea of “large-scale campaign” of the State Investment Project is not bad at all.
