Decentralisation and regional development, aimed at human potential development, are the priority goal to be pursued by the Ministry’s strategic plan for 2018, emphasised Hennadii Zubko, Vice Prime Minister – Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine, opening the “Regional Development” strategic session.

Hennadii Zubko specified the number of steps on the formation of the state regional policy carried out in the recent years, and noted that the process of formation of an efficient system of regional development is not accomplished in view of the existence of problems and challenges in this area.

The Vice Prime Minister stressed that at this stage it is important to identify new effective mechanisms that will help realise the potential of the regions, use their competitive advantages, and create new growth points.

He set a task before MinRegion to urgently and with the participation of experts prepare draft laws on improving the instruments of state regional policy and financial mechanisms for stimulating regional development, in particular by modernising the Law of Ukraine “On Stimulating the Development of Regions”, as well as using the funds of the State Fund for Regional Development.

Vyacheslav Nehoda, First Deputy Minister, outlined the main tasks defined as priorities for the current year. They include:

• improvement of the system of strategic planning of regional development;

• provision of a stable and predictable funding of regional development in line with the EU approaches;

• integrated monitoring of regional development; improvement of the institutional environment of regional development;

• development of interregional and cross-border cooperation.

According to the Strategic Session, a number of priority issues of the regional development were identified. Besides, the participants of the session expressed their respective proposals for improving the processes of formation and implementation of the state regional policy.

Following the results of the Strategic Session, proposals to the 2018 Strategic Action Plan of the Ministry were elaborated.

Reference

The “Regional Development” strategic session on discussion of the priorities and tasks of the state regional policy for 2018 and in the medium-term perspective was held by MinRegion on 25 January 2018 with the organisational and financial support of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme. The event took place with the participation of Hennadii Zubko, Vice Prime Minister – Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine, Vyacheslav Nehoda, First Deputy Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine, representatives of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine, Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, specialised committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, central executive bodies, oblast state administrations, associations of local self-government bodies and experts of international technical assistance projects on regional development.