Ladies and gentleman,

It is my pleasure and honor to address you on the occasion of the «Israel-Ukraine trade business summit».

First, I am pleased to note the dynamic development of the entire complex of Ukrainian-Israeli relations.  In December last year, we celebrated the 26th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations, but in such a short historical time, we managed to achieve impressive performance:

-                     we continue active political dialogue at bilateral and international levels;

-                     our trade and economic relations provide bilateral trade up to 1 billion USA dollars annually;

-                     our humanitarian and cultural ties are successfully developing;

-                     we maintain fruitful inter-ethnic dialogue.

 We consider that the significant impetus to bilateral relations in recent years was achieved due to the established personal relationships at the highest level, the active inter-parliamentary cooperation, the meetings of the joint intergovernmental commission, renewal of the legal basis of bilateral relations and intensive exchange of visits at various levels.

The significant coincidence of interests on the international scene, mutual support and, what is the most important – mutual trust and openness, give both sides the firm basis for the confidence in reliable future of the relations between Ukraine and Israel.

Israel is an important and promising trade and economic partner of Ukraine in the Eastern Mediterranean region and in the Middle East. Despite all the difficulties, we manage to maintain, in general, the high level of our economic relations, but overcoming of the negative trends in our trade must be a priority goal in our agenda.

I want to underline that the issues of economic cooperation between our countries

are always in the focus of the negotiations of  the President of Ukraine  Petro  Poroshenko with Israeli officials. We hope, that today’s visit of the Stepan KUBIV First Vice Prime Minister, Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine, will give a new impetus to our bilateral economic relations. 

The implementation of the Free Trade Regime between the two countries, will contribute substantially to the development of bilateral economic relations. In less than a week, our negotiation teams will meet here in Tel-Aviv to make the final legal scrubbing of the text of the Agreement. After that, the final document will be ready for signing at the late October.   We consider the signing of the Agreement as an excellent occasion for official visit of the Prime minister of Israel Mr. Benyamin Netanyahu.to Ukraine.

We must state with pleasure the increase in trade turnover between our countries in 2017. However, the general turnover in the first quarter of 2018 shows a small decline. Such fluctuations convince us of the necessity to rapidly conclude the Free Trade Agreement. With the entry into force of the Free Trade Agreement, many obstacles in our trade relations will be eliminated.

Ukraine is considerably interested in promotion of bilateral projects in the spheres of agriculture, standardization and metrology, transport, energy, pharmaceuticals, space research, and so on. Special importance is given to the development of our cooperation in hi-tech and IT sphere.

Let me express hope that today’s event will help to establish new ties and  signing of new contracts in trading sphere to promote further mutually beneficial cooperation between our countries.

In this respect, I want to appreciate the efforts of the Export Promotion Office and the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine together with our Israeli friends in organization of this event.

I would like to wish sincerely to all of you fruitful work at this forum and success in all yours undertakings.

And now, it’s my honor and privilege to present you Stepan KUBIV First Vice Prime Minister, Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine.

In actual Government of Ukraine Mr. Kubiv is a key figure responsible for economic development of our country, business activity, innovations, investments and other important spheres.

Mr. First Vice Prime Minister – the floor is yours.

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