The Ukrainian government has recently unveiled a draft long-term development strategy for the country, spanning 15 years and titled “The Economy of the Future.” The document, more than a year in the making with support from the World Bank, identifies the main drivers of postwar economic growth as the attraction of private capital, competition and the development of entrepreneurship. The strategy assumes that GDP will grow by 6 percent a year, that the share of investment will rise to 24–30 percent of GDP, and that at least 3.1 million Ukrainians who fled the war abroad will return home.
Planning for postwar economic recovery is the right decision. Yet “The Economy of the Future” reproduces a well-worn tradition among Ukraine’s powerful: behind a façade of grand figures and promises of reform, there are no working mechanisms to deliver them. Tellingly, the new document even lowers the bar of ambition. In 2023, Yuliia Svyrydenko—then still minister for economic development—promised that within ten years Ukraine’s GDP would reach $1 trillion. With Ukraine’s nominal GDP at around $207 billion in 2025, and even on a fairly ambitious 6 percent growth rate, “The Economy of the Future” promises only $500 billion by the early 2040s. The strategy’s true purpose lies elsewhere. It appears to have been drawn up not for domestic use but, first and foremost, for presentation to international partners—the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. Because of Russia’s aggression, Ukraine is deeply dependent on external financing, and every fresh tranche of macro-financial assistance requires a demonstration of reformist intent. A strategic document with the right words and ambitious numbers performs precisely that function: it signals solvency not in an economic sense but a political one, attesting that Ukraine’s authorities “understand the task” and are “moving in the right direction.” Whether the strategy is actually implemented is a secondary question. Almost none of the current politicians, or the officials of the international institutions, will be in office fifteen years from now.
The countries that have achieved comparable long-term growth—Poland and the Baltic states among them—pursued economic policies aimed above all at widening the space for private initiative. Its key elements are well known: stable and predictable tax rules, minimal discretionary powers for the supervisory authorities, an independent judiciary to guarantee property rights and resolve disputes, and an open economic environment free of privileged groups.
In Ukraine, by contrast, fiscal and regulatory policy over the past seven years has moved in a fundamentally different direction. Its conceptual basis is an extractive model of relations between the state and the private sector, in which the latter is treated above all as a source of budget revenue rather than as an autonomous agent of economic development. The leading architect of this course is Danylo Hetmantsev, chair of the Verkhovna Rada’s committee on finance, taxation and customs policy, who has consistently pushed to broaden the tax base, tighten administration and abolish the simplified taxation system. The course culminated in the National Revenue Strategy to 2030, adopted in late 2023 ostensibly as an IMF demand. Its implementation produced the steepest rise in the tax burden in the entire history of independence, along with greater intrusion by the supervisory authorities into the running of businesses.
Another factor that will shape the implementation of “The Economy of the Future” is the terms of Ukraine’s external borrowing. On 28 May, the Verkhovna Rada ratified the agreement on macro-financial assistance from the EU under the Ukraine Support Loan, worth up to €90 billion in total, of which up to €8.35 billion is earmarked as direct budget support in 2026. The memorandum of understanding between Ukraine and the EU, signed in Brussels on 20 May—ironically, the very day the government’s strategy was unveiled—sets out legally binding conditions for the disbursement of each of the three tranches. These requirements are unequivocal: the mobilization of domestic revenue, improved management of public finances and the harmonization of tax law with EU directives. The condition attached to the third tranche, in particular, is reform of the simplified taxation system, intended to raise additional revenue and to differentiate the rates paid by third-group single-tax payers. This is the very reform that the business community has consistently regarded as a systemic threat to small and medium-sized enterprises.
What is actually needed
If we strip away the declarative shell and put the question plainly: what exactly has to change for the Ukrainian economy to grow at a rapid pace?
First, a complete overhaul of current fiscal policy is required. The existing model of relations between the state and business is incompatible with any scenario in which private capital is the engine of growth. A new conception of fiscal policy must proceed from the opposite principle: Ukraine’s tax environment should be a competitive tool for attracting investment, not a mechanism for plugging the budget deficit at business’s expense. That means low and stable tax rates, minimal discretionary powers for the supervisory authorities, and an end to the practice of revenue targets and blanket inspections.
Second, a reshuffle of personnel across the economic and financial institutions is needed. A strategy that proclaims the primacy of private initiative cannot be carried out by a team that has spent seven years consistently curbing that very initiative. This is not about rotating people between agencies, but about a wholesale replacement of the key posts in the economic bloc of the cabinet with people whose public stance and practical experience match the liberal model being proclaimed.
Third, real rather than declarative deregulation is required. “The Economy of the Future” points to the need for a predictable regulatory environment, yet predictability is measured not by promises but by a country’s standing in international indices of economic freedom and business-climate rankings such as those of the Fraser Institute, the WJP Rule of Law Index and the EBA Investment Attractiveness Survey. Ukraine currently ranks 143rd of 165 countries in the Economic Freedom of the World 2025 report, in the company of African states and Russia. Real deregulation means concrete and irreversible steps: cutting the list of activities subject to licensing; shifting most business activity from a permit-based to a notification-based model, in which the state is informed that operations have begun rather than granting permission for them; and introducing genuine risk-based supervision, under which the controlling authorities inspect not everyone indiscriminately but only those who pose a real risk, according to clear, public and unchanging criteria.
Fourth, the commitments to the EU on building up the anti-corruption bodies and safeguarding their independence must be honoured. The “Kachka–Kos” plan, signed in December 2025 after the scandal over legislative attempts to subordinate the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office to the Prosecutor General’s Office, sets out concrete requirements: enshrining in law the right of SAPO to carry out procedural actions without the prosecutor general’s approval; introducing a transparent, competitive selection process for the head of the State Bureau of Investigation, with the participation of international experts; and revising the procedure for appointing the prosecutor general. Without an effective anti-corruption infrastructure independent of the executive, the arrival of international investors in Ukraine will remain a mere declaration of intent.
Fifth, an independent judiciary is needed—the condition without which the rest of the reforms lose their meaning. Despite some progress in recent years, Ukraine’s court system still fails to provide what an investor needs most: predictable protection of property rights and the actual enforcement of court rulings. Investors enter a country when they are confident that a contract can be enforced through the courts and an asset shielded from politically motivated pressure or corporate raiders. In Ukraine, that confidence is currently absent.
None of these steps is a revelation. They have been known to Ukraine’s authorities, to its international partners and to the expert community for years. The problem is not a shortage of expertise; it is, precisely, a shortage of the political will to act on it. For now, Ukraine’s authorities have a unique opportunity: external financing, international attention and a popular mandate for reforms that would be impossible in peacetime. That window is steadily narrowing. Every year without structural change merely reproduces the same economic trap from which Ukraine has been unable to escape for decades. And achieving that does not require writing yet more strategies, only for them to turn into waste paper.