Ermolaev: Ukraine is accumulating a pile of disasters for the future
Ukraine may get through the heating season, but high energy prices and other accumulated problems make its industry uncompetitive, and within a year it will feel this.
Political scientist Andrei Ermolaev stated this on air on the NASH channel, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“I will draw attention to the latest statement of the Ukrainian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs last week, in which very serious warnings were sounded about the situation of utility companies, the situation of the processing industry, glass, and dairy, which has not yet closed.
There are still the first negative signs for enterprises, some of which are curtailing their activities, but many of them, and we are talking about dozens, if not hundreds of enterprises and hundreds and thousands of jobs that are quite stable and permanent, but which people may lose even in the near future time.
Because the corridor in which they find themselves - the highest cost of gas (many of them use gas in their production), unsustainable tariffs, credit debt, falling purchasing power of the population - all this can lead to a snowball collapse of the domestic market. This, by the way, is the same negative thing that they warned about in December, when they drew linear forecasts,” he noted.
“If we understand that with such a rise in prices or such a price ratio, with such a high tariff, we find ourselves in a situation of threat of bankruptcy and social tension, we have time to correct this. The government made a decision on stabilizing prices for utility companies, twisted the arms of private gas producers so that they would guarantee the supply of part of the gas at fixed prices, they responded - 12 million cubic meters of gas per day are supplied at fixed prices for this category of enterprises.
But this is a half measure. We will survive the winter, but the question is why were there catastrophic forecasts at the beginning of winter? Because many economists saw the future - with this approach to ensuring energy safety - coal from the wheels, just enough gas through the stump - you can live for two or three months. But this is not how countries live and develop.
When we talk about the future and the fundamentals of security policy, we are talking not only and not so much about security related to the border and the army, we are talking about the conditions for safe development, because now we will ensure the safety of survival for two to three months. Everything is calm until March, but what will be the situation in our economy throughout the budget year, what will be the situation of enterprises that will not be able to come out of the winter period with huge debts? What will they do with their team, with their production? Big question.
I am not a supporter of disasters, thank God that we are living through the difficult cold time without these disasters, but we are accumulating this lump of disasters for the whole budget year,” the expert concluded.
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