On August 20, as part of the regional platform “Dialogue Between Government and Business,” an online meeting was held on the topic “Relocation: Current Proposals and Opportunities.” More than 100 representatives from the business community and government in the Donetsk region participated in the event.
Participants were presented with opportunities for relocating businesses to other regions of Ukraine, available industrial sites, as well as support tools for people who were forced to leave their homes due to the war and are in need of employment.
In particular, representatives of the Chopovychi settlement community in Zhytomyr Oblast spoke about the conditions for hosting relocated businesses. The community has convenient transportation links, land plots for industrial and processing production, as well as experience in supporting businesses that are relocating their production facilities.
Among the opportunities offered are investment plots with a total area of over 100 hectares, including a site for an industrial park. The community already has positive examples of business attraction: one of the enterprises, relocated from Kyiv, has resumed production and plans to create about 20 new jobs.
Separately, participants highlighted opportunities for internally displaced persons. The Chopovychi community is exploring the use of its housing stock to accommodate IDPs and has potential properties that could be converted into social housing.
Igor Onishchenko, CEO of Mukachevo Forestry Complex PJSC, presented another site for relocation. The enterprise, located in the Chynadiyevo community of Zakarpattia Oblast, offers a 7-hectare industrial site with production and warehouse facilities, utilities, and the potential to accommodate new manufacturing operations. Some of the facilities are already ready for use, while others can be renovated to meet the needs of the relocating enterprise.
Key advantages of the site include an electricity supply, its own well, the possibility of connecting to gas networks, and proximity to a major railway line. A solar power plant is operating on adjacent land, and plans are in place to install energy storage systems.
During the meeting, participants also discussed support for people displaced by the war. Representatives of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Organization of the Ukrainian Red Cross Society presented the program “Reboot: Expanding Employment Opportunities.”
This program provides career counseling, assistance with resume preparation, career guidance, support for starting a business, and professional retraining. The program is prepared to take into account the needs of employers in the Donetsk region for specialists and to organize appropriate retraining. In particular, they discussed the possibility of training workers in manufacturing and other in-demand fields. The maximum duration of such training is up to four months.
Thus, during the meeting, the participants viewed relocation not merely as the movement of production facilities, but as a comprehensive process that encompasses the search for premises and investment sites, as well as providing housing for employees and securing their employment.