A booklet and a web site presented last week in Rivne position this Western-Ukrainian city as the right place for investing and doing business.
The presentation was made at a meeting of the Implementation Management Committee – a task force established by the city government to monitor and guide implementation of Rivne's Economic Development Strategic Plan. Both the booklet, "Rivne – Eastern Europe's Most Promising City for Investing," and the official web site of the Rivne Economy Department are joint production of the department and the InvestInRivne agency, and address a number of the plan's tasks.
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According to Economy Department Head Mykola Kyreya and InvestInRivne Deputy Director Ruslan Svirsky, the web site is a test version, so it is still being populated and has a temporary net address, www.rivne.freesia.com.ua. The site is bilingual, Ukrainian and English, and will contain information aimed primarily at investors and business people, such as information on land plots for sale, registration and permit procedures, local regulations, the Strategic Plan and other programs, authorities, banks, enterprises, catering facilities, etc. "All this is now being uploaded," Mr. Svirsky told the LED Monitor.
The Rivne City Rada (Council) has an official web site. Nonetheless, it was decided that a new site would be developed for the Economy Department, an executive body of the Rada.
"The City Rada's site has broader functions," Mr. Svirsky explains the decision. "Some of its information will not be interesting to potential investors. Our goal, however, was to make, on the one hand, a site where investors could find information that is useful to them, and on the other hand, a platform for highlighting and discussing implementation of the economic development strategy."
"The core of this site is the Strategic Plan and everything that is related to it, namely investment attraction and small to medium enterprise development," Mr. Kyreya pointed out.
Mr. Svirsky said they specially made the site somewhat "ascetic," but its architecture allows for easy response to users' requirements through insertion of new modules. "We intentionally didn't make a forum module so that we first launch the test version of the site and look at the effect. Neither did we make any narrow, industry-specific, modules – we want first to receive requests and then custom-build up the site."
He called the local web designers who developed the site "a big though latent resource for the competitive, innovative component" of local economic development.
The 16-page booklet features Rivne as a city with a dynamic and growing economy, skilled labor resources, and rich culture and history. It contains key facts on the city's population, location, and industries.
Mr. Kyreya said more than a half of the booklet's circulation of 4,000 copies is in English, and will be distributed among embassies and trade missions of foreign countries.
According to the booklet, foreign direct investments in Rivne totaled $59.5 million as of Jan. 1, 2007, accounting for nearly 55 percent of the Rivne Oblast's total investments.
InvestInRivne was founded in 2005 by the Rivne Oblast State Administration and the Rivne City Rada Executive Committee. Its objectives are to contribute to the creation of positive image of the region, search for investors and attract investments, assist investors and provide services to them, and advise state and local authorities on how to improve the investment climate in the region, according to the agency's web site.
Rivne is one of the USAID LED project's partner cities. In 2006, the Expert Committee formed in the city drafted, with assistance from the project, the Economic Development Strategic Plan, which was passed by the City Rada on Nov. 22, 2006. The plan's so-called critical issues are Development of Small to Medium Enterprise and Business Infrastructure, and Investment Attraction.