Local elites in order to cope with the new situation used the best card they had on their hands. Knowledge of local 'athmosphere' to block many foreigners to plunder and take over their countries.
Of course, methods used to prevail were not the most ethic and westeners were not expecting that hard job to try to put their legs on this new market. Acces to control on raw materials was, di facto, closed to foreigners and all was run by new groups related to the structures of power of USSR in each of the republics. Locals adopted a very unfriendly attitude towards foreig investors.
Some people will consider this situation as not logical and not acceptable by international standards of relationship. In this blog, we do consider this situation as natural.
Step by step, this situation starts to change when Russia, Ukraine elites go abroad, look for recognition from world business forums and realize that they are strong enough to go abroad but at the same time, they have the obligation to open its countries to foreign investors. Besides, they do not fear anymore any take over from them as they already have a reasonable financial strenght which allows them to compete with other world players.
Efforts to reduce corruption, to ease burocracy are related to this new relationship being built with the rest of the world. Of course, Baltic States were the first to be friendly to foreign investment. Things are getting better in Russia and we expect some changes in Ukraine as promises during Mr.Yushenko's presidency were not implemented.
Anyway, the most required change in these countries is related with law enforcement. Till today, court and judges have been too often related to bribes, fraud etc...strong local structures which control these institutions, do use them to take advantatge in front of other locals and foreigners. That creates an athmosfere of unsecurity which stops many players to get involved in investments in these countries.
President Medvedev and other mandataries from these countries have promised improvements and transparency in the law system. We expect changes.
Dear Blogger, welcome to the WWW and congratulation for finally starting a long awaited blog! ;) I can only stress one point: CORRUPTION. Corruption in Ukraine is much more spread than anyone could possibly imagine - from entering schools and universities, to getting better treatment in hospitals, to police on the street up to government/policy levels. I therefore think that, although yours was an attempt to give a macro view of a very twisted contorted and complex story, this specific issue should be addressed in a much wider way! Indeed we're talking about the mother of most if not all problems in Ukraine...
ResponEliminaDear Bad Boy,
ResponEliminaThank you very much for having a look on this blog !!! When I decided to open this blog, I told myself to avoid this blog to become a list of complaints from foreigners about how these countries should be run. CORRUPTION is probably the most visible problem of these countries. Aim of this blog is to speak about many good things that can be found in these countries and speak about more unknown facts and problems when working or investing in these countries.
Grazie Mile !!!