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citizens such a mobile application, Zelenskiy said at the initiative’s presentation, stressing that no state funds were spent to develop it. “The state should be for people simply a service – convenient, simple and understandable,” Zelenskiy said. “On the whole, our goal is to ensure that a person can engage in all relations with the state with the help of a SmartPhone and the Internet. That includes voting at the presidential, parliamentary and local elections.” The launch of Diya marks the start of the government’s State in a SmartPhone initiative, PM Oleksiy Honcharuk said at the same presentation, having set the goal of digitalizing all state services in three years. Meanwhile, 50 of the most demanded state services will be offered by the year end, he said. About 3.5mn Ukrainians use online services (or 9% of the public), which the government is aiming to boost to 10mn by the end of 2020.
As of March 1, Ukrainians IT companies can hire up to a total of 5,000 foreign IT specialists per year under a fast track visa and work permit system​, according to Oleksandr Bornyakov, deputy minister for Digital Transformation. In one of the hottest sectors of Ukraine’s economy, IT companies create 40,000 new IT jobs a year, but local universities only graduate 17,000 specialists each year. The foreigner quota will be geographically dispersed: Kyiv: 2,500; Kharkiv: 700; and Dnipro, Odesa and Lviv: 600 each
Foreigners can “soon” apply for Ukrainian e-residency, ​a status modeled after Estonia’s six year old virtual residency program, Jaanika Merilo, Estonian-Ukrainian advisor to Ukraine’s new Ministry of Digital Transformation and Innovation, writes in the Kyiv Post. She asks: Why would they want to? Taxes, she replies. IT entrepreneurs are taxed in Ukraine at 5% -- well below 50% European rates. In reverse, 4,000 Ukrainians are already e-residents of Estonia, getting access to PayPal, securing EU property rights and taking advantage of Estonia’s ease of doing business and declaring taxes. With Ukraine’s new government announcing new digital steps weekly, Estonia often is in the background as a digital role model.
Eight Ukrainian start-ups won grants worth a total of $360,500.
Companies include IT, retail, fashion, and non-profit start-ups . The country’s Startup Fund is a government fund baimed at ientifying and nurturing promising domestic tech companies.
Ukraine should aim to triple IT workers, to 650,000, and nearly triple IT export revenue, to $13bn a year​, Kira Rudik, a leader of the Rada’s Digital Transformation Committee, said in Zaporizhia. “The IT industry is growing fast,” said Rudik, former CEO of Ring Ukraine, now owned by Amazon. “We are an agrarian country. We have every chance to become a technological country. What we need to do to achieve this is increase export revenue to $13bn a year.”
9.1.8 ​Tourism sector news
Foreign tourism to Kyiv grew 5% y/y in 2019, to 2mn people, ​according to the city’s Tourism and Promotion Office. Last year, tourism tax revenues doubled, to $2.5mn. Early last year, Kyiv started to implement a new national law extending lodging taxes paying guests staying at private residences, a measure aimed at Airbnb.
56​ UKRAINE Country Report​ March 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com