TOPICAL PROBLEMS OF UKRAINE IN ACHIEVING A POSITIVE TRAJECTORY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

Abstract

The article deals with issue of overcoming the chronic problems of the Ukrainian economy and ensuring its advanced development on the path of European integration. The purpose of the article is to determine key causes and consequences of Ukraine's ineffective model of development in the period of market transformations and to argue the necessity of radical revision of the fundamental principles and approaches to state economic policy implementation. The trends of economic decline in Ukraine during transition to a market economy are described. It is stressed that Ukrainian economy needs urgent professional diagnosis, reanimation and development, not imitation of reforms by means of non-interference policy that led to "free economic fall". The reason for discrepancy between official macroeconomic statistics and real standard of living in Ukraine during 1990-2017 is explained. A comparative analysis of the socio-economic dynamics of Ukraine and a number of other countries, which had roughly identical starting positions in the development of the national economy at the end of the twentieth century, is conducted. The author emphasizes that the current economic policy in Ukraine, which foreign experts and diplomats regard as successful, actually causes stagnation of the economy. The challenges of European integration for Ukraine in the context of ensuring economic convergence with the EU are identified. The necessity for a profound structural transformation of the domestic economy, as opposed to the superficial neoliberal  reforms carried out in the time of independence, is proved. The author concludes that withdrawal from a neoliberal paradigm in economic policy and transition to a deliberate industrialization will allow to increase the Ukraine’s GDP growth rate to 8-10 per cent annually and to catch up with developed countries.