OREANDA-NEWS. February 16, 2016. As Oleksii Pavlenko, the Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, stated during a meeting with Guillaume Scheurer, the Ambassador of Switzerland in Ukraine, Ukraine is interested in attracting Swiss investments in the Ukrainian agricultural sector.

During the meeting, Oleksii Pavlenko emphasized the successful bilateral cooperation in the field of seed production. In particular, he mentioned the project implemented by Swiss company “Allseeds” on the construction of an oil-extraction plant at the Yuzhny port with the total amount of investments of \\$200 million. According to statistics from the Swiss National Bank, Switzerland has invested in Ukraine about 2.6 billion Swiss francs. This investment in Ukraine has created more than 32 thousand jobs.

The Minister presented the perspective directions of investment in Ukraine, in particular, the ones associated with organic production. As Ambassador Scheurer noted, Switzerland has become a pioneer in terms of providing technical assistance to Ukraine through the implementation of the project “Organic Market Development in Ukraine”.

Additionally, the Minister stressed that Ukraine was interested in deepening and intensifying mutual cooperation with Switzerland, both at government-to-government and business-to-business level. For instance, these directions are the matter of:

- participating in joint exhibitions and fairs of the two states;

- involving of Ukrainian and Swiss agricultural businesses to joint discussion of all problematic and promising issues of cooperation;

- intensifying of investment cooperation;

- creation of joint ventures;

- the holding of joint forums or roundtables with the participation of business institutions of Ukraine and Switzerland.

Ambassador Scheurer, in turn, called on the Ukrainian producers and exporters to take full advantage of the terms and conditions of the EFTA-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement.

The Ambassador of Switzerland in Ukraine, Guillaume Scheurer stressed the interest of Switzerland in increasing investments in Ukrainian economy and the intensification of trade between the two countries.