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27 July a Round Table: “Social Partnership – the Way to Success” took place in Starobelsk, Luhansk Oblast. It brought together village and rural settlement council heads, community organization leaders, business entity representatives from Starobelsk, Svatovo and Novoaydar Rayons of Luhansk Oblast and Institute for Rural Development’s experts Tamara Ostashko and Nadiya Tymoshenko.
As part of the session, ICP expert, Doctor of Economic Sciences, Tamara Ostashko presented the results of a research “Ukrainian Agriculture under the WTO: Producers’ Expectations and Experts’ Forecast”.
Following the presentation, the participants discussed the ways to consolidate efforts of local authorities and public organisations towards the development of local communities and finding solutions to community problems. When discussing local self-government activities, social partnership and fundraising to tackle local problems, the issue of financing by the Foundation for Local Self-Government of Ukraine was raised. As it was mentioned before, the last year’s All-Ukraine Local Self-Government Programme Tender was won by a project proposal prepared by a community from the Luhansk Oblast. However, the community did not receive the promised funds to this very day.
The round table participants came to the conclusion that the key community development factor should be an improved credit policy. There are many private entrepreneurs and business associations willing to contribute to rural social problem solving. Most of them would like to take the credit for their business development and transfer a part of their profits to develop the local infrastructure. This is impossible in the current situation due to imperfect legislation and limitations in loan size and time, which do not allow to carry out efficient economic activities.
Experience was shared also on other relevant rural issues, such as garbage collection, provision of services for the disabled, ritual services etc. The event enabled rural development practitioners and theoreticians to establish closer contacts in order to jointly tackle rural problems in Ukraine.
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