ANATOLIY GIRSHFELD TOOK PART IN DISCUSSION "DEVELOPMENT OF DOMESTIC ENGINEERING FOR THE NEWEST AGRO-TECHNOLOGIES”

On September 20, the Executive Director of the National Industrial Development Committee, the People’s Deputy of Ukraine, the Honorary President of the UPEC IG Anatoliy Girshfeld took part in the panel discussion "Development of domestic engineering for the newest agro-technologies" held within the International Agro-industrial Exhibition AgroExpo 2017 (September, 20-23, 2017, Kropyvnytskyi).

During the discussion, the representatives of the Ukrainian business, central authorities, people's deputies, leading experts and scientists discussed the ways of Ukrainian engineering development; creation of new models of machines in the context of global trends of agro-technologies development and mechanisms of State support of industry development and conquering the new markets.

Anatoliy Girshfeld pointed out in his speech that agricultural engineering is one of the leading industries today.

For this reason National Committee for Industrial Development preferred agricultural engineering by developing a set of events of support the basic industries that will become the engines of the country's economy. "This industry goes through difficulties today and there is a positive growth trend in this sector at the same time, – noted in his speech Anatoliy Girshfeld. – In order to support the development of the agrarian sector and agricultural engineers, National Committee headed by the Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymir Groysman developed and launched the Program on 20% compensation of the cost of agricultural machinery and equipment of domestic production directly to farmers. In order to ensure that this program is not a one-off, 1% of agricultural GDP was allocated to the development of the industry according to the State Budget Code that allowed turning to the state support more systematically than ever".

Anatoliy Girshfeld voiced the problems faced during the work on this program. "First of all, we needed to change the form of localization definition so that not assembly factories could receive the preferences as it was earlier, but Ukrainian producers of agricultural machinery, so the state budget money will work in domestic economy rather than received by foreign producers. We have clearly described what the percentage of localization of the trailed, complex self-propelled machinery should be. Then we faced the strongest resistance of the bureaucratic apparatus, – continues Anatoliy Girshfeld. – Just think over: nine months passed starting from the creation of the decree to the moment of its real come into force, when the farmers received the first money from national banks upon the availability of budget funding! And these nine months, unfortunately, had negative effect. The farmers trust was shaken again. They do not believe that this compensation program will work without a hitch. But I believe that we can overcome this barrier. The farmers will start to receive compensations, "word-of-mouth advertising" will work and the program of agricultural producers support will start to work effectively".

Executive Director of the National Committee defined the roadmap for the future:

"The most important thing we have to do is to overcome the technical and technological gap between foreign and domestic machines and equipment. It is obvious that for this it is necessary to create several agro-clusters in the country, which shall receive the certain state financing. We will be able to reach a new technological level of domestic multi-functional energy-efficient machinery production, combining our science, industry, academic, factory and production components".

In conclusion Anatoliy Girshfeld highlighted the importance of constructive discussion between agricultural engineering enterprises and authorities. "It is important to know and understand how Ukrainian agricultural producers live and what they are interested in, how they see the processes that has been launched, what is needed for more efficient work of these mechanisms in their opinion".

The development and implementation of effective mechanisms of huge transformations in the Ukrainian industry, stimulation of investments in the real economy sector, efficient use of high resource potential of domestic production can give positive signal to domestic and foreign investors, to establish new and strengthen existing external economic relations, to create competitive advantages for productive and scientific-capacious business.