Ukraine is situated in the southeastern part of Central Europe and has its own territory, government, national emblem, flag, and anthem. It borders on Russia, Byelorussian, Moldova, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Poland on land and Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey on sea. After Russia, the Ukrainian republic was far and away the most important economic component of the former Soviet Union, producing about four times the output of the next-ranking republic. Its fertile black soil generated more than one-fourth of Soviet agricultural output, and its farms provided substantial quantities of meat, milk, grain, and vegetables to other republics. The main Ukrainian River is the Dnieper. It is one of the longest European rivers and one of the republic’s main sources of hydroelectric power.
The Dnieper and its tributary the Ross had been the cradle of the Ukrainian and Russian people in immeasurable time. Due to favorable climatic conditions, Ukraine is traditionally an agricultural area. It grows wheat, maize, buckwheat and other corn, red and green vegetables, all kinds of fruit, melons and berries. Ukraine is one of the world’s main centers of sugar production. It produces sugar both for her own needs and for export. The country is rich in natural resources, such as iron ore, coal, color metal, oil, gas, mineral salts, clay and potential water power.
It has developed a varied industry, concentrated mostly in and around big cities. It produces planes and ships, lorries and buses, motorcars and locomotives, computer and electronic equipment, precision instruments and agricultural machines, TV and radio sets, chemicals and textiles and various consumer goods. Under the conditions of radical changes which took place on the world arena in the period from late 80-ies to early 90-ies the people of the newborn Ukrainian state chose their own way of development. Primarily aimed at creation of a democratic, legal and socially oriented state where the rights and freedoms of man are honored and the force of law prevails. Ensuring state independence, territorial integrity and immunity of state frontiers became a priority means of internal revival and development of the Ukrainian State, protection of national political and economic interests on the world arena. On the basis of these priority tasks, the foreign policy of independent Ukraine and its key foreign political priorities are determined.
From the time of the proclamation of independence, Ukraine has been building its foreign policy on the basis of full adherence to the norms and principles of international law. In the course of the millennia the historical destiny of Ukraine has been determined by the two important main lines of communication going over this region. In the first place it is the diagonal route from Europe to Asia, which during the different epochs has been going over north or south of Maritza River. An important role for the economy of the region was the river itself. Plovdiv and Edirne in 1873 have been intensely used for carrying good by water from the inside of Thrace to the Aegean sea and vice versa. The strategic situation lead to the strengthening the position of the Fares, where the main exchange of the production and buying of the import goods.
The biggest fare in the European Turkey – The fare of Ouzoundjovo has been organized in this region and it had a duration of 40 days and has been visited by 20 000 to 30 000 merchants, and sometimes their number was even greater. The biggest was the commodity turnover with Austria, England, and France. In 1999, researchers of Economics Department of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences focused their efforts on investigating complex and conflicting processes of economic reforms, overcoming the economic crisis, and creating a basis for stabilization and transition to economic growth. Considerable attention was given to the issues of macro-economic, fiscal, scientific and technological, innovation, investment, agribusiness, regional, environmental and demographic policies. The research also covered social aspects of Ukraine development, in particular, development of labors potential and labor motivation, social welfare, and social insurance. A set of problems related to the country’s foreign economic policy and ensuring the competitiveness of the national economy was investigated.
The researchers studied the influence of the integrated regulation mechanism of the state and market on reproduction processes, allowing for the effect of pricing, taxation, investment, innovation and fiscal policies, as well as foreign economic relations. Revealed was the character of the influence of these factors on the formation of real incomes and costs, creation of accumulation and consumption funds and dynamics of socio-economic development. The processes of market transformations in agriculture were also investigated. The Department’s researchers solved philosophical, methodological and information problems of forecasting Ukraine’s economic development on the path towards financial stabilization, obtained model-based evaluations of its development in separate economic sectors, and carried out simulation-based medium-term calculations, using different economic-policy scenarios.
We studied theoretical problems of developing models for financial forecasting, stabilization and economic growth in Ukraine, with due regard for external and internal factors of forming the economic policy, as well as its influence on the status and prospects of the country’s economic development. (I. I. Lukinov) A system of sectional forecasting models was elaborated. It was oriented to forecasting economic growth with a simultaneous iterative approximation to preserving basic macro-economic proportions. The interaction of these models can be seen in the construction and coordination of basic indicators of payment and monetary balances the system of national accounts and balance of the state budget in the system of models for forecasting the Ukraine’s economy.
In the year under review, the development of a fundamental research.