Industry4Ukraine platform presented the project of the National Program for Cluster Development till 2027. The document was prepared by the experts of the cluster committee of the Industry4Ukraine, including the director of the Project and Educational Centre “Agents of Changes” at the Precarpathian University Svitlana Kropelnytska. This project justifies the necessity of enhancing the cluster development in Ukraine, presents the principles and directions of the development till 2025 and has a number of recommendations for the executive branch as well as for heads of cluster structures.

During her presentation, Svitlana Kropelnytska talked about the possibilities of financing clusters in the context of the new strategy of regional development.

Cluster is a sectoral, territorial and voluntary network of organizations which closely cooperate with each other and other in the manufacturing and marketing chain of creating the value in order to increase the competitiveness of own product, its export, to decrease transaction and economic costs and to enhance the economic development of the region.

It is important to differentiate clusters from other business unions, from sectoral business associations, in particular. As a rule, the latter ones aim at lobbying joint business interests of their members and do not aim at industrial cooperation, export and innovations.

Clusters are supported by certain cluster programs or through integration in other programs of economic support. Most often, cluster policy is connected with innovations, researches, developments and technological support. Most cluster policies realize a mixed strategy supporting both new and established sectors and aim at industrial transformation using clusters as change catalysts.

In the Ukrainian legislation, there are dozens of legislative and legal acts mentioning clusters or connected with clusters. However, there is no adopted legislative or legal act where cluster development is the object of state regulation.

Despite its long period of existence, cluster movement in Ukraine is badly organized at the national level and increases rather spontaneously. There is no single organization, a representative of Ukraine’s clusters, though.

Cluster development is badly supported by the state. Before 2020 there were no responsible bodies in the central government, appropriate national policies or development programs.

In the country, there are about 50 cluster initiatives and clusters, 22 of which are on the platform European Cluster Collaboration Platform (ECCP). Recently, we can observe significant intensification at the regional level.

30 cluster organizations registered in Ukraine represent the following sectors:

• ІТ – 31%;
• AIC – 16%;
• woodworking and furniture industry – 13%;
• power engineering – 10%;
• aerospace – 6% and others.

The most developed and mass are IT-clusters among which Lviv and Kharkiv IT clusters stand out according to their level of organization and activity scales. The clusters of automative industry “Transcarpathian Region”, Kherson business cluster (engineering) and furniture cluster of Rivne Region are famous among industrial clusters.

However, now in Ukraine, there are enough people and organizations who know the subject and initiate cluster formalization. Amon them are proactive enterprises (Interregional industrial cluster Eastern Food Technology plus and Lviv IT-cluster), business associations (Association of enterprises of industrial automation of Ukraine), etc.

Properly speaking, the mentioned above project is an attempt to improve the situation and the first step to the normative regulation of this question. This project must be approved at the level of Ministry of Economics as a state program of cluster development till 2027 with relevant modifications (including the detailed plan of events and allocation of funds).

• Share: