THE INDUSTRY OF DONBAS ON THE WAY TO THE RESTORATION

Abstract

For last 25 years, Ukraine’s economy did not attain those indicators, which would testify to the independence of the state, competitiveness of its companies on the internal and external markets, and social development of the society. Moreover, the absence of stable positive economic and social tendencies in the state and separate regions led to the critical challenges and threats.
This concerns especially Donbas, where the conflict situation was transformed in the armed confrontation. As a result, a significant part of local enterprises was destroyed, remained without raw materials, energy carriers, and sales markets, or works at an incomplete power. The majority of coal mines were stopped. The losses in the metallurgy, chemical industry, power industry, and machine-building industry are very high. The productive and civil infrastructures are essentially damaged. Hence, after the termination of combat operations, the significant efforts should be applied to the recovery of a normal functioning of the economy of the industrial region, provision it with a skilled manpower, and development of a new modern production. It is necessary to make all possible things for the maximal use of natural and human resources of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions with the purpose of the innovative development of state’s economy on the whole and the solution of urgent social tasks.
For the promising part of Donbas’ industrial complex, the main direction of development must be an increase in the competitiveness of products of the enterprises due to the support of a modernization of industrial plants by means of the introduction of innovative science-intensive technologies, total activation of the innovative process, integration of institutions of science, education, and production, formation of complex measures for the efficient development of large enterprises and small business, essential enhancement of the quality of products and the environmental security of productions, the training of personnel, and their requalification with regard for structural changes in the economy. For each industrial branch, the complex programs of recovery and development should be created. They together with the programs in other branches and in social and ecological policies must form a common program of actions aimed at the return of the region to the normal life. The efficiency of the program of recovery and development of Donbas can be increased due to the development of a Strategy of structural reconstruction of its economy and the establishment of a special fund for its restructurization from private and international sources.