Ukraine sets up special body to promote industrial development

The Ukrainian government said on Tuesday it has established a special committee to promote the industrial development of the country.

"The National Industry Development Committee is designed as a mechanism to address problems of the domestic industry and create prerequisites for manufacturing the competitive national product," said a statement on the government website.

According to it, the conception of the newly-established committee was jointly developed by the Ukrainian government, industrialists, entrepreneurs and scientists.

Commenting on the establishment of the body, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said its main tasks are the development of processing industry, creation of conditions for producing high value-added goods and transition from the resource-dependent to the innovation-driven model of the economy.

If those tasks are implemented, Ukraine has a potential to create tens of thousands of new jobs in the industrial sector, Groysman said.

Ukraine's industrial sector has plunged into recession in 2012 due to the poor demand for its main goods on the global market. The crisis has been severely aggravated by the conflict in eastern regions, the country's industrial heartland, which started in 2014.

In 2015, Ukraine's industrial production saw its sharpest decline in six years, plummeting 13.4 percent. Endit