Ukraine seeing brain drain in high-yield economy sectors – expert

Director of the Institute of Economic Development of Ukraine, Oleksandr Honcharov, has said labor migration causes great damage to Ukraine, because the country is losing highly qualified specialists in high-yield economy sectors. This entails the loss of Ukraine's positions in world markets.

"The system of labor division is based on competitive advantages, so those states that are able to increase their competitive advantages in high-yield economy sectors ensure a better position in the markets, dominating over other countries in trade and economic relations. We have reached the point that the general designer of the world famous Ukrainian aviation concern Antonov, Dmytro Kiva, as a labor migrant, moved to Baku to create the Azerbaijani aviation industry. A couple of decades ago, we were traditionally and rightly considered a scientific and technological state and successfully controlled the markets of high-tech products, but in recent years, we have actually left these very profitable markets," the expert wrote in his blog on 112.ua.

He believes that if the Ukrainian developers and manufacturers of passenger and military cargo planes had a national program for aircraft construction, and leading designers and engineers didn't choose to work in other countries, "we would have a colossal locomotive of Ukraine's economic growth."

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"Why aren't we even trying to study, in particular, China's experience in implementing a strategy of advanced development, focusing on high technology? Look at the potential of the Ukrainian economy: huge natural resources and many talented people (decent human capital – almost 100% of high school graduates seek to get higher education). However, Ukrainians continue to actively move to work abroad. The reason is again banal and remains in the economic plane. For example, in the neighboring Poland or the Czech Republic, there's a high level of wages and open vacancies. And this is would be a delusion to think that it's only the hands of our compatriots that are needed in the European Union, United States and China. More and more foreign employers are looking for Ukrainians to be employed in their IT industry and high-tech production, rather than be engaged in physical labor. Accordingly, about 2.6-2.7 million people may be outside Ukraine at any given moment, working for the benefit of other countries' GDP," Honcharov said.

In his opinion, if in the short term the government fails to raise the quality of services provided and to create conditions for the local employers to be able to raise the level of wages to the European, American and Chinese levels, while increasing labor productivity, the number of migrant workers will continue to grow uncontrollably. "As a result, as experts are increasingly saying and writing, the growth of labor migration may become a limiting factor for the Ukrainian economy in the future," the expert said.