In January-March of 2020, the general capital investments in the national economy of Ukraine totaled 76.9 bln UAH only, a decrease of 29% compared with the same period last year. At the same time, the investment volumes in the agricultural industry, hunting and related services decreased by more than one third: from 10.9 bln UAH in the first quarter of 2019, to 7 bln UAH in January-March of 2020, declared the Head of the department of innovations, inventory and logistics support at the National Scientific Center “Institute of Agrarian Economics”, Doctor of Economics, Oleksandr Zakharchuk.
According to him, decreasing of investments in the agricultural sector of the economy by 35.3% is one of the largest declines of capital investment for 5 recent years.
The expert noted that the current decline of investment proposal started developing further back — in 2019. It is the result of the incoherent and inadequate investment policy of the government in the agricultural sector, where the principles of residual allocation of the public funds for investment activities in agriculture usually dominate.
Therefore, there are numerous problems, accumulating and deepening in the agricultural industry, which traditionally provides nearly 11-15% of the added value in the country, O.Zakharchuk said.
The main ones are underdevelopment of the production investment and innovation infrastructure, excessive depreciation of fixed assets, and the deficit of conditions for their reproduction, insufficient liquidity of investments, unsolved problems with the mortgage loans, the deficit of financing for development of the road network in rural areas, etc.
