For three months, the teams of the Dobrovelychkivka, Novhorodka and Znamianka municipalities of the Kirovohrad region worked on the development of investment passports together with experts of U-LEAD with Europe.

In order to create a working and useful tool for economic development and recovery, local self-governments analysed information about their own resources, determined investment attractiveness factors and learned to turn challenges into opportunities and draft investment proposals.

This was reported by Oleh Yaremenko, head of U-LEAD with Europe Regional Office in the Kirovohrad region.

“The municipality has always needed an investment passport for economic development. In wartime, the issue of restoring territories and developing municipal economies is even more urgent. Perhaps investors will not be here today or tomorrow, but after our victory, foreign investments will pour into the country en masse. And this will be a great chance for municipalities that have ideas and an understanding where to invest. Because if a municipality has neither a passport nor any promising plans, the investor will invest in another municipality, one that is able to offer tangible projects and investment sites,” said Oleh Yaremenko.

According to him, the value of the documents that municipalities have developed with U-LEAD experts is in their flexibility and relevance. Firstly, this document is in electronic form, so it can always be revised; things can be added or changed depending on needs. Secondly, when the municipalities developed investment passports, they actually looked at their area “through another’s eyes”, revealing new ideas for development.

“Not every municipality in our region has a development strategy. Local self-government bodies would usually develop a socio-economic development programme. However, this document does not provide a detailed analysis of the available resources or the study of the rational and economically justified use of certain facilities and properties. Moreover, it does not consider them as business proposals. When developing investment passports, municipalities had unexpected discoveries, “finding” ownerless properties. Sometimes the municipality thought that the property was private, but it was actually municipal. There were cases when local entrepreneurs themselves volunteered their properties for the document (for lease/sale),” said Mr Yaremenko.

According to experts who helped the municipalities in the development of passports, their efforts create a great foundation for further development and start. During the ten months of the war, the municipalities of the Kirovohrad region helped and sheltered hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the war. Some have returned home, but there are those who have nowhere to return. According to U-LEAD experts, these people can strengthen the potential of municipalities and become a “magnet” for relocating enterprises into a certain village or town. Experts suggest the principle of “like to like” for the relocation of a business that can create jobs for people moving from the same region.

“Having looked at its resources and opportunities, a municipality might focus not only on foreign investments, but will also try to seek/stimulate domestic investors/entrepreneurs,” the experts said.

According to Serhii Boichenko, representative of the Dobrovelychkivka municipality, participation in this project helped create a document that will help present the municipality’s investment potential at the international level, attract investments and develop the area.

In turn, working on the investment passport changed the attitude of the team of the Znamianka municipality towards available resources. Ihor Uchaniev, Head of the Infrastructure And Investment Development Department of the Znamianka City Council, told us about it.

“During the process, U-LEAD pointed out some features of the municipality that we had never considered to be promising. For example, we have abandoned properties, and experts explained the value of such plots to investors. Therefore, we learned a lot and gained new knowledge,” he said.

For the team of the Novhorodka municipality, an important step was the establishment of communications with local entrepreneurs and their active participation in this process. As a result, one of the business ideas of the investment passport was the creation of a mineral water production enterprise.