On Dec. 8 and 9, 2007, the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast's town of Dolyna will host the First Boyko Regional Investment Forum
Zoreslava Podolska and Oleksandr Zheleznyak, USAID LED Project
The first regional investment forum in Boykivshchyna – the region of Boykos – is designed as a multidimensional event. Besides the obvious purposes of outward promotion of the region and direct marketing of sites, it also has an important inward dimension of community awareness-raising.
According to the forum program, the highlight of the event will be presentation of 36 sites offered in the raions (districts) and towns of Dolyna, Bolekhiv, and Rozhnyativ for industrial and tourist development. In fact it was the original intent: "just sell land plots and thus get investors," Dolyna Mayor Volodymyr Harazd said in an interview with the LED Monitor. However, as arrangements for the forum went along, its organizers decided to use the event for forming in communities, especially in villages, where they have huge land resources, a favorable public opinion of investments and investors. "We want to inform our communities on the investment market, and on how to deal with investors," Mr. Harazd said.
The Mayor of Dolyna, a town of just above 20,000 residents nearly 70 kilometers to the west of Ivano-Frankivsk, related the history of the First Boyko Regional Forum. The idea of holding the forum sprang up in 2006, when a team from the Dolyna City Rada attended an investment forum in Kamyanets-Podilsky, Khmelnytsky Oblast. The idea was discussed with members of the City Rada (Council), and the city developed and adopted an Investment Attraction Program and then a City Promotion Program, the latter being baked up by UAH 48,000 earmarked in the 2007 city budget.
"However, when we began engaging in forum organization seriously, we realized that in a small town like Dolyna it would be very difficult to hold an investment forum at any serious level," recalls Mr. Harazd. "That is why we approached our neighbors of Bolekhiv and Rozhnyativ with this idea, made them interested, and then started collaborating."
In early March the idea received its current name – the First Boyko Regional Forum, and in April Mr. Harazd and Dolyna Business Center Director Oleksandr Kizyma enrolled for the USAID LED project's training program on attraction of foreign direct investments (FDI). FDI experts from the project and the Ukrainian Center for Foreign Investment Promotion (InvestUkraine) helped them make "a few important and substantial changes" in the general concept of their investment forum.
"Everything came out well, even better than we could have expected. As the training went along and we communicated with the experts in Kyiv, the idea of the forum was developing and improving," says Mr. Harazd.
There is more to it in terms of FDI knowledge dissemination. While holding regular meetings of the investment forum coordinating committee, attended by village mayors from the three raions, "we intensively exchange information, we together learn how to work databases of land plots, we learn how to carry on an equitable dialogue with investor. Because today in Ukraine nobody but the LED project teaches such niceties of negotiations," Mr. Harazd pointed out.
He also explained that the forum is called "Boyko" to promote this "brand" in Ukraine. "Today we live in a competitive environment. Ordinary citizens in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, associate the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast only with Hutsuls. Any commodity or service branded as Hutsulshchyna are in awful demand. But believe me, Boykivshchyna also has something to present, and we also have places to invite guests and investors to."
A certified FDI professional, the Dolyna Mayor has both the experience in investment attraction and his own philosophy of how to treat investors. He says that an investor is a partner in the first place. "Treating an investor as just a moneybag is very erroneous."
Dolyna Mayor Volodymyr Harazd (standing on the left) and Business Center Director Oleksandr Kizyma make a joint presentation as part of FDI certification examinations on Oct. 24, 2007
As a successful investment example, he cites collaboration with Inter Groclin Auto S.A., Poland's leading exporter of seat upholstery for Volvo, Mitsubishi, Renault, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Smart, and Audi cars. On Feb. 28, 2007, the Dolyna City Rada issued a permit for Groclin Dolina to collect materials for preliminary site selection negotiation, and in eight months, on Oct. 25, the company was allowed to begin construction of a factory. According to the Mayor, it was a quick pace for such a large-scale project, estimated at about €11 million and expected to create 1,500 jobs.
Says Mr. Harazd: "We, mayors, understand well that an investor always has a choice. It is important therefore to minimize entry barriers for him, and ensure that the rules of the game are simple, comprehensible, and open. And in that – same for all.
"Naturally, the mayor and Rada members are guided by problems of their community, and they always want to attain a maximum economic effect from an entrepreneur's contribution to the city; but on the other hand, one must understand that the entrepreneur works for his profit. Speaking in a literary language, an investor is like a bird – hold him lest he flutter out but don't hug to death."
The Mayor also said it is impermissible to subject an investor to constant changes in requirements. Noteworthy, Polish web-based Motogazeta quoted Groclin spokesman Jerzy Pięta as saying that "continuous changes in rules" and a number of other reasons were behind the company's strategy of moving its production from Poland to Ukraine.
Mr. Harazd also reported in more details on activities at the investment forum, advantages of Dolyna and the region as location for investments, and plans of the city government regarding future investment attraction efforts. To read the full interview with the Dolyna Mayor in Ukrainian please click here.
