The «Export and Internationalization of Industrial SMEs» program was developed by the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance (UCA) Analytical Center as a part of proposals to the Ukrainian government’s anti-crisis action program in 2022. The document is a public and collective appeal of UCA clusters to the Ukrainian government for better coordination of anti-crisis actions.
UCA’s proposals emphasize that in martial law business requires immediate and decisive actions in support of SMEs, 50% of which are currently suspended due to the hostilities’ consequences. Accordingly, the government’s anti-crisis program of action for 2022 should provide targeted, well-thought-out and effective action programs on well-agreed priorities and directions.
The document notes that since March 2022, the Government of Ukraine has already implemented a number of measures that help stabilize the situation and reduce the crisis.
At the same time, according to the authors of the document, these measures are still insufficient in terms of counteracting the scale and consequences of the growing economic crisis. Among programs the government lacks UCA points to insufficient support for export and internationalization of Ukrainian industrial SMEs. Due to significant reduction of the internal market, this direction should appear in governmental programs as #1 to solve the key problem of SMEs – obtaining new orders.
UCA offers 4 key areas of action for the government:
- Expansion and better support of the “Buy Ukrainian” program, which is already offered by the “Entrepreneurship and Export Promotion Office” state enterprise.
- Integration into GVC: a program to support integration of Ukrainian enterprises into European and global value chains.
- Inno-Integration: programs for accelerated inclusion and support of Ukrainian innovative enterprises in relevant European programs of innovative development, dual digital and green transition.
- Standardization: programs to support technical regulation and accelerated transition of Ukrainian enterprises to international technical standards.
For each of these areas, the document details individual sub-categories of activities, as well as some already developed UCA projects with specific amounts of budgets, action plans and outputs. This proposal includes 11 sub-categories of activities. These UCA proposals are derived from those of the Industry4Ukraine platform, on which experts’ work lasted in 2018-19. The document contains examples and results of UCA activities during the first 3 months of the war, which demonstrate the potential of business associations both as independent implementation of export tasks and in cooperation with the state.
Proposals to the government also include recommendations for immediate action, which propose validation of 2 state programs of Integration in GVAC (Global Value Added Chains) and Cluster Development, as well as anti-crisis programs better balancing of high-tech industries’ interests with other economy sectors.
This document is public and is communicated to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and relevant ministries also in separate appeal letters.
The UCA Coordination Headquarters welcomes the accession of other business associations to this document and joint actions to promote the proposed initiatives and projects.