A meeting was held in Lviv at which a vision was formed of how Lviv Oblast should develop, taking into account the conditions of wartime.
Today, January 24, in Lviv, experts, scientists, heads of territorial communities, representatives of structural divisions of Lviv Oblast met at an extended meeting of the Steering Committee on updating the Development Strategy of the Lviv Oblast for the period 2021-2027 and developing a Plan of measures for its implementation in 2024-2027 in order to discuss the main areas of further updating of the Strategy.
Expert support in this process is provided by the organization “USAID” within its project “Increasing the efficiency of work and accountability of local self-government bodies” (“HOVERLA”). As a result of cooperation, it is planned to involve more than 55 representatives of the expert environment.
Among the participants of the meeting, in particular, the deputy head of the Lviv OVA, Ivan Sobko, the head of the Lviv regional office of the USAID HOVERLA Project, Oleksandr Voloshynskyi.
Today, the structural divisions of the regional state administration and USAID, the leadership and representatives of the regional council, local communities, experts, scientists, all the participants of the meeting had the task of forming a vision of how Lviv region will develop in the future, taking into account the conditions of wartime – emphasized the deputy head of the Lviv OVA for budget and health care , culture, youth and sports, education, social protection of the population and services for children Ivan Sobko.
“On the one hand, we can see that the budget policy at the central level is mobilized as much as possible to help the army, and this is the most basic thing. On the other hand, the filling of local budgets has now increased, and despite their over-execution, local communities must continue to form an effective network of budget institutions.
Effective management involves real implementation, and not postponement, of specific functions delegated by the state, local self-government body, or owner. This should be reflected in the main strategic document of the Lviv region. We must understand how many hospitals, vocational education institutions, music and art schools, etc., the region needs, based on the needs of the economy. We need to understand how much land we have for agricultural purposes, forests, territories of the nature reserve fund. Strategy is to know as much as possible and use economic, cultural and other resources efficiently and rationally.
War makes us stronger and victory will be ours. Unfortunately, in the time in which we live, we feel a lot of pain and suffering, but we have already overcome many challenges and will overcome them, because our strength is in unity and we demonstrate this with weapons, volunteer help, and our position,” Ivan Sobko noted. .
The project of the updated Strategy and Plan of measures for its implementation is planned to be developed by September this year. Expected results of the development of these documents, among others:
demographic and economic forecasts and scenarios for the development of Lviv Oblast;
socio-economic analysis of trends and main problems of the development of territories and branches (sectors) of the economy, assessment of natural resources, production, labor, scientific, financial and innovation potential of the region;
carried out research of the environment in the cross-section of industries (survey of the population, business, scientists, doctors, educators, cultural figures).
As Oleksandr Voloshynskyi, head of the Lviv regional office of the USAID “HOVERLA” Project, noted, it is in the development of strategies and other planning documents that the Project sees the basis of the institutional development of community capacity, because these documents will serve as the basis for their post-war reconstruction and economic growth.
The USAID HOVERLA project works with seven oblasts of Ukraine, but most of all with Lviv Oblast, from which all initiatives begin, which then spread to other oblasts. The development of the updated Oblast Strategy also begins with the Lviv Oblast, and we will spread the experience gained to our other partner regions of Ukraine.
From the Project, we can guarantee our support and expert assistance regarding the strategic development of communities. This year, we decided to start this process for seven communities in the Lviv region. We also work with spatial planning for partner communities, and in the future we will help start this process for all communities.
In addition, together with our partners, we prepare programs for economic development, as well as investment passports. And we can share examples that already exist, including in Lviv Oblast.
We will also present the results of research on the impact of IDPs and relocated businesses on community development and the lives of local residents.
An important development in the direction of updating the Strategy is the Analytical Portal of the Lviv region, which USAID developed together with the Lviv OVA. The portal provides an opportunity to evaluate certain industries and territories. This is especially valuable when updating the Strategy – to understand how neighboring territories are developing, how the region is developing in general, and what are the trends. I hope that our path will be successful,” added Oleksandr Voloshynskyi.
As noted in the Department of Economy Flights