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Speech of Nataliya Izosimova on presentation of Ukraine’s Economic Development Agenda
Dear friends, ladies and gentlemen!
Thank you for accepting our invitation and for your interest in our work. You give us lots of moral support.
Today, for the first time we are talking in public about Ukraine’s Economic Development Agenda developed by the Foundation for Effective Governance.
In my welcome speech I would like to answer three questions:
1. What made us do this work?
2. What is Ukraine’s Economic Development Agenda and what is it not?
3. What are we going to do with the Agenda later?
Before I start answering the questions I would like to make a short retrospective journey to the beginnings of the Foundation. Why was the Foundation for Effective Governance created? The Foundation was created to promote economic growth and strengthen the competitiveness of our country. The Foundation was created to help improve Ukrainian people’s lives. To do this, the Foundation shall finance and develop the programs aimed at economic growth as well as facilitate and support public debates on the most important development challenges facing Ukraine. To achieve these goals, the Foundation attracts the best independent Ukrainian and foreign experts with excellent backgrounds, expertise and impeccable reputations. Why have we chosen Ukraine’s Economic Development Agenda? Why does the founder of the Foundation provide generous funding for the activity? Because all of us, the Board of Trustees and the employees of the Foundation, sincerely share his philosophy and believe that sustainable economic growth and the country’s economic prosperity could improve the life of each citizen: of a student or a pensioner, of a middle class representative or a civil servant, of a miner or a doctor.
All of us want to be sure of tomorrow, we want financial stability for ourselves and our families; we want to earn decent money by doing decent work.
We need economic opportunities for this. As Margaret Thatcher said: “With economic freedom comes real freedom”. To create economic opportunities, we need economic development, which can be attained only through economic reform.
Let me make a small digression for a second. On March 17-18 we held the first meeting of the Board of Trustees at which we discussed the projects and the future plans of the Foundation. This was the first time that I heard the expression “young people vote with their feet”. Everything is simple: talented young people, who are the key potential of any nation, leave the country in search of places with economic opportunities. And this is considered to be one of the key, but still tacit criteria, for the success and future prospects of the country. There are no exact statistics but up to 6 million young people have left Ukraine. What does it mean for us? It means if we hesitate to start creating economic opportunities for people now we can’t be very optimistic about the future.
That is why we are sure that the price we will have to pay for idleness and delays in economic reform is too high. That is why, in order to facilitate economic reform and economic growth, the Foundation needs to develop its own understanding and position, its own vision of the program of Ukraine’s economic development. That is why we have started working on Ukraine’s Economic Development Agenda with a mid-term perspective.
However, I would like to note that our role is very modest. The Foundation is a part of the civil community. We are not the government, which is responsible for the successful implementation of economic reforms; we are not the parliament, which can adopt laws and we are not an academic institution, which gives scientific recommendations. We do not claim that our position is the ultimate truth. However, we believe that today we present a comprehensive and in-depth product created by independent experts.
Of course we are not pioneers. Lots of Ukrainian and international organizations have done this kind of work from different standpoints. We have been cooperating with a number of such organizations and I hope we will continue to cooperate. We had people to get support and advice from. In addition, and fortunately, we could use the reports, recommendations and surveys of our colleagues. Thank you to all of them.
The second issue. What is Ukraine’s Economic Development Agenda developed by the Foundation for Effective Governance?
The Agenda presents the vision and position of the Foundation. The Agenda presents a set of answers to the questions what Ukraine should do and how to achieve sustainable economic growth from our point of view? The Agenda gives an integrated view of Ukraine’s economic development for the next 5 years. We’ve taken efforts to collect all best practices. We’ve tried to make use of the other countries’ experience: both the countries similar to ours and the countries with a higher level of economic development. And we added a systemic approach, strict economic focus and practicality. These are the distinctive features of the Agenda.
What the Agenda is not? The Agenda is neither a program of the government nor a document of any political party. The Agenda is not an academic survey. It is not the undeniable truth. I think it’s a quote from Plato: “Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it”.
We don’t want to show how clever we are. We would like to use the product as an invitation to a wider discussion, a systemic dialogue between different groups of civil society: experts, business, mass media, civil servants and the public. Actually, I have started answering the third question. What then? And then we are ready to serve as a platform for discussion. And during the discussions we will make sure that every constructive idea, opinion or position will be heard and discussed. We really hope that the discussion will not be of a theoretical nature, but will help answer a number of practical issues and find agreement on them.
In addition, we are ready to work with any government on the reforms where we share the same opinion. We are ready to provide the government with the best resources for serious, deep and comprehensive development of specific programs. We are ready to cooperate with parliamentary committees and the President’s institute. We are ready to show proof that we are independent, open and practically oriented.
And now a few words about the today’s meeting. For the purposes of presentation the Foundation has invited the agenda’s key developers who I am going to give the floor to. The structure of the presentation is as follows. At first we will describe the approach underlying Ukraine’s Economic Development Agenda for the next 5 years. Then we will tell you how the Agenda was created. After that we will give a comprehensive vision of the priorities for Ukraine’s economic development. And finally, for the purpose of demonstration, we will give a detailed description of one of the areas. The full text of Ukraine’s Economic Development Agenda is available at the website of the Foundation and on the discs, which are in your folders with materials.
After the presentation we are planning to hold a 30 minute Q&A session. To make it more efficient, we kindly ask you to write your questions during the presentation. You have an envelope and a form for questions in you folder. Please, address your questions to one of the presenters and please attach your business card to the envelope with your question or write down your name. Should we not be in the position to answer any of the questions today, we will reply to you personally later. And all the questions and answers will be also available at our website.
As I have mentioned already, the Agenda is a collective product. The work has been carried out under the auspices and the guidance of the Foundation using the efforts of many experts and advisers, including McKinsey.
The participants of the presentation include………….
Thank you for your attention and I wish all of us an interesting discussion.
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Foundation for Effective Governance
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