OREANDA-NEWS. On October 31, 2007 an official presentation of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) new regional project "Black Sea Trade and Investment Promotion Program (BSTIP)" has taken place in Kyiv. The program's main goal is to promote regional economic development, develop trade and investment linkages between BSEC Member States with positive impact on the reduction of poverty and offers improved dialogue among countries with political tensions, reported the Official website www.kmu.gov.ua.

The Black Sea Trade and Investment Promotion Program is the first step within the UN and BSEC cooperation. The Program's duration is 3 years and it covers all BSEC Member States (Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine). It is co-financed by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Greek Ministry of Economy and Finance (by EUR 500,000), UNDP and BSEC. It is the first program jointly co-financed by the Government of Turkey and Greece under the auspices of the UNDP and is also the first partnership project between the UNDP and BSEC. The project office is based in Athens.
According to Francis O'Donnell, Resident Coordinator of UNDP in Ukraine, the project implementation is expected to promote economic development of the region, boost trade and investment linkages between BSEC Member States. He noted the beneficiaries of the program would be small and medium enterprises, and special emphasis will be given to enterprises managed by young and women entrepreneurs.

As UNDP's Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS (RBEC) Director Giuseppe Belsito said the project strategy includes four main components: undertaking comprehensive trade flow analysis in order to identify priority products/services with sub-regional investment and trade potential; carry out a series of market surveys to document product/services-specific investment and trading complementarities through the identification of relevant players; organize specific buyers/sellers meetings for products/services with promising sub-regional trade and investment potential; support the development of specific tools for networking arrangements within the business communities of the sub-region.

The project target beneficiaries are enterprises, particularly small and medium-sized ones in the countries of the sub-region. In addition, regional and national business support institutions in the sub-region will be targeted in order to improve their services to their members by offering focused trade and investment development support through an effective networking mechanism covering the Black Sea region.

For his part, Deputy Economics Minster Valeriy Pyatnytskiy of Ukraine favourably spoke about the project's planned activities and expected results. About one-third of foreign trade volumes are concentrated in the Black Sea area. He recalled that Ukraine will hold a half-year Presidency in the BSEC from November 1, and this enables to intensify cooperation among BSEC Member States and encourage national business towards regional cooperation reach in huge potential.