Investment activity index in Ukraine in April ar 4.23 out of 10, says survey

Kyiv, April 18 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The index of investment activity in Ukraine in April 2012 was 4.23 out of 10, reads a survey of directors of U.S., European, and Ukrainian investment companies in April 2012 at the request of the State Tax Service of Ukraine.

The survey was conducted by the Research & Branding Group.

"Investors stated that the investment climate in Ukraine today rather bad, but 4.5% of investors tend to view the investment climate in Ukraine as good," founder of Research & Branding Group Yevhen Kopatko said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.

According to the survey, 8.3% of investors stated that the investment climate is very bad, while another 35.3% said it was close to being very bad. At the same time around 50% of investors assess investment climate in Ukraine as neutral.

Kopatko said that a fifth of the investors surveyed (17.6%) expect the investment climate to improve. About a third (30.7%) think it will deteriorate over the next half-year period.

Positive changes in the quality of the investment climate in Ukraine over the past six months were identified by 12.8% of investors. More than half of them felt that the investment climate in Ukraine has not changed at all over the past six months, and more than a third said that the investment environment had deteriorated significantly over the same period of time.

A fifth of the investors surveyed (17.6%) expect the investment climate to improve. About a third (30.7%) think it will deteriorate over the next six months.

More than a half of the investors surveyed (51.7%), however, are not expecting any changes in Ukraine's investment environment to occur over the next six months.

In their assessment of the government's economic policy, investor opinions were split almost equally, with a third of them stating that the Ukrainian government's economic policy was not consistent with current global economic reality, 39% thought that it was equally consistent and not consistent, and 27.9% said that it was rather or fully consistent.

Almost half of the company directors surveyed were undecided or reluctant to share their investment plans for the next 12 months, but 31.1% who agreed to share had decided to make investments in Ukraine during the upcoming year.

Corruption, the judiciary, administrative barriers, and the tax system were cited by company directors as the key impediments to improvement of the investment climate in Ukraine.

The head of the State Tax Service of Ukraine, Oleksandr Klymenko, said at the press conference that the tax service is a key regulator of business climate and its actions influence the mood of investors.

"I'm sure that the survey will be taken as a mechanism for making decisions by the authorities, and provide certain guidelines for business. We initiated the survey. Our role ended with this," he said.

Klymenko said that Research & Branding Group would conduct a repeated survey in the autumn of 2012.

Information collection was performed using a questionnaire method. The sample is represented by 290 directors of U.S., European and Ukrainian companies that are investors and large taxpayers.