A spearhead in Drohobych is drafting projects to get prepared for any financing opportunity
On this photo from LED files, Volodymyr Kondzyolka is speaking at an SPC meeting in the Drohobych city hall in December 2005. On the left is Svyatoslav Yonyk, Drohobych City Rada Economy and Entrepreneurship Office Chief Specialist for Investments and Foreign Economic Relations A map of the Pan-European Transport Corridors (click to enlarge). Source: Wikipedia
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As calls for project proposals tend to reach the Ukrainian provinces just before application deadline, a group of activists in Drohobych, Lviv Oblast, decided to draft priority projects in advance, to be ready to jump at any opportunity for financing that can open up.
According to Volodymyr Kondzyolka, chairman of the Yuriy Drohobych Society and director of the Computer Group limited company, the spearhead in fact consists of members of the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) that was hammering out the Economic Development Strategic Plan for the city from October 2005 to February 2006 with assistance from the USAID LED project.
“If we submit a project worth, let’s say, a million euro, it needs to be elaborate,” Mr. Kondzyolka explains. “But information, as usual, reaches us two to three weeks before application deadline, at the earliest. And this makes professional-level project preparation very difficult.”
The last straw that triggered the group’s decision to work proactively was what Mr. Kondzyolka fears to be failure to meet the deadline for submission of an infrastructural project proposal. “The city sent it to Poland on May 16. I’m afraid that with our [slow] mail it did not reach Warsaw before May 18, set as the deadline for submission, because there has been no acknowledgement of receipt,” he told the LED Monitor in late June.
The project proposal in question was developed under the Neighborhood Program Poland-Belarus-Ukraine INTERREG IIIA/Tacis CBC. Under the program, the Yuriy Drohobych Society is an official partner of the Regional Economic Chamber in Przemyśl, Poland.
The spearhead is considering the development of several projects. Among these Mr. Kondzyolka cited Bruno Schulz Museum – an idea that had been voiced at an SPC meeting but had not been expressly embedded in the Strategic Plan's final text – as well as Przemyśl-Drohobych Logistic Axis, and Financial/Investment Supermarket. He elaborated upon the latter two:
Przemyśl-Drohobych Logistic Axis
According to Mr. Kondzyolka, in Przemyśl, on the very border with Ukraine, they are developing a very large logistic center. So why not make a logistic center also on the other side of the border, in Drohobych, and organize shuttle cargo service with several trailers?
"Drohobych sits at the intersection of two Pan-European transport corridors: the third and the fifth," Mr. Kondzyolka substantiates the idea. "The two corridors merge in Lviv [90 km from Drohobych], so the cargo traffic between Europe and Ukraine, and between Poland and Romania, Hungary goes through Drohobych."
The scheme outlined by Mr. Kondzyolka looks as follows. Imagine a Ukrainian enterprise, for example, in Kyiv or in Kharkiv that has to ship a container of their products to Europe. Now they have to hire a vehicle meeting the European Emission Standards, which will carry the goods all the way to Europe, also standing one or two days in line to the customs.
"What we intend to offer is you bring your cargo to Drohobych by any transport. Here we'll have three or four trailer trucks that will take your shipment to Przemyśl, and from there it will be forwarded to destination in Europe," Mr. Kondzyolka explained. "Customs officers and border guards will know well both the trucks and the drivers, and the latter will know well all relevant procedures, so the process will take less time. And if we manage to get these trucks jump the queue, they will be able to do several 100-kilometer trips between Drohobych and Przemyśl a day."
The Drohobych logistic center – if this project ever comes to implementation – is expected to provide a number of other services including clearance, customs warehouse, and certification.
Says Mr. Kondzyolka: "The nearest certification authority, where you can check up your cargo for compliance with Ukrainian standards, is in Lviv. It's not too convenient. Using the project budget we could establish a laboratory within the logistic center and transfer it to the state."
Financial/Investment Supermarket
A Financial/Investment Supermarket can be established within the framework of the logistic axis. The idea is to bring representatives from customs, banks, consulting and investment companies, and other business service providers under one roof. "It's like a customer in a supermarket: a businessman or an investor or a foreign company that wants to operate in Drohobych can find in this building the full range of services," said Mr. Kondzyolka.
Cross-Border Cooperation
The two would-be projects are now in the phase of discussion. "We are gathering all the necessary information, communicating with the certification authority, and making rough cost estimates," Mr. Kondzyolka said. The projects were also presented at a round table for local entrepreneurs and officials from Drohobych and Przemyśl in April.
In the meantime, the Yuriy Drohobych Society collaborates with the Regional Economic Chamber in Przemyśl in developing and implementing a Cross-Border Center for Economic Initiatives in Przemyśl.
Part of this collaboration is the development of Ukrainian and Polish web sites with information on enterprises in the two cities. "This information will be not just on what an enterprise makes but also on whom it wants to see as it's partners, suppliers, etc.," Mr. Kondzyolka pointed out. "We and our Polish counterparts have agreed on the questionnaire form. The information from the Ukrainian site will be translated into Polish and posted on the Polish site."
The enterprise database on the Ukrainian site already contains information on about 40 entities. In the future, the site will be trilingual: Ukrainian, Polish, and English.
Another part of the collaboration is meetings of business people and visits to enterprises. "In business, personal contacts are very important – when you know somebody personally: what he thinks, how he lives, how reliable he is, etc.," Mr. Kondzyolka related. The last such meeting in June in Przemyśl even included a soccer game between teams of businessmen from the two cities.
These activities have already begun yielding results, and Mr. Kondzyolka cited several examples:
The Ukrainian construction company Prykarpatbud and Domus from Poland are negotiating supply of road repair equipment.
The Halychyna Oil Refinery is placing a pilot order with POLNA for a lot of valves.
The Drohobych Truck Crane Plant through the Regional Economic Chamber in Przemyśl is preparing market research to enter the Polish market.
The Computer Group is receiving the first lot of solar water heaters through the Polish dealer of Australia-based Solahart.
"Ukraine and Poland have rather special relationships. These bear the impress of Ukrainian-Polish prewar and postwar relations. Therefore, there is the issue of giving rise to certain trust between partners. And those meetings of ours show that this trust is beginning to appear. The Poles see that the Ukrainians are people with whom you can collaborate. And I think that a major result is the strengthened trust, which facilitates business contacts," Mr. Kondzyolka concluded.
The Yuriy Drohobych Society was established in 2001 by a group of Drohobych entrepreneurs in order to promote development of the city and its region. Today the society has 21 members mainly representing small to medium businesses.
The Drohobych Economic Development Strategic Plan, worked out with assistance from the LED project, focuses on tourism development, investment attraction, and small and medium business development.