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Overview of Rivne Oblast GENERAL INFORMATION Rivne Oblast is located in the north-western part of Ukraine. The territory of the oblast is 20,100 sq.km. It runs 130 km from west to east, and 210 km from north to south. It borders on the Zhytomyr, Khmelnitskyi, Ternopil, Lviv and Volyn oblasts of Ukraine, and Brest and Gomel oblasts of Belarus. Its administrative-territorial division is into 16 rayons, 4 towns of oblast subordination and 6 are of rayon subordination. The population of the oblast is 1,200.000 people, or 2.3% of the population of Ukraine. The average density per 1 km is 59 people. 52.5% of the population live in villages, and 47.5% live in towns. The forest reserves of the oblast cover 853,000 hectares, with the land under forests is 794,000 hectares, and the general timber resources of over 100, 000,000 cubic meters. Rivne is rich in surface waters. Here there are 171 rivers over 10 km each, over 500 lakes, and 31 storage pools.

Industrial and agricultural products are leading in the general volumes of material production of the oblast.

Altogether, in the oblast there are 295 industrial enterprises with different property forms with the yearly sales of over UAH 1.6 billion, and 64,400 persons employed.

The structure of the oblast production is: power sector - 53.8%, fuel industry – 0.2%, chemical and petrochemical industries – 16.5%, machine-building and metal working – 4.3%, timber, woodworking and pulp and paper industries – 4.8%, construction materials industry – 5.3%, glass and china and faience industries – 3.9%, light industry – 1.3% and others – 2.4%.

Among the leading enterprises of the machine-building and metal-working sector are open joint-stock companies "Rivne Plant of Tractor Component Units", "Gazotron", "Rivne Radio Engineering Plant", "Rivnesilmash’ ("Rivne Plant of Agricultural Machinery"), "Rivne Plant of High-Voltage Gear".

The representatives of the light industry are open joint-stock companies "Rivnelyon" ("Rivne Flax") whose main products are linen fabrics for industrial and domestic use, "Rivne Factory of Non-woven Materials", "Dubrotex" (cotton and spinning factory).

The chemical industry is represented by an Open Joint-Stock Company "Rivneazot" ("Rivne Nitrogen") manufacturing nitrogen and phosphatic fertilizers, synthetic ammonia, sulfur, nitrogen and adipic acids.

Rivne Nuclear Power Plant is operating at the territory of the oblast, with the three operating power-generating units having a summary capacity of 1818 mW.

Other important industries are timber and woodworking industry and construction materials one. In the oblast there are 3 woodworking and one housing construction industrial complexes, 9 furniture factories, 14 stone quarrying and processing enterprises, and an Open Joint-Stock Company "Volyn" (cement and roofing slate industrial complex).

The food industry counts 6 sugar plants, meat and dairy processing enterprises, a number of canned food factories, distilleries, confectionery factory, etc.

Energy-saving technology for manufacturing non-woven materials for furniture and car-construction industries is being implemented at the Open Joint-Stock Company "Factory of Non-woven Materials".

Work is under way at the OJSC "Rivne Plant of Tractor Component Units" to master car and bus component units manufacturing.

The production of brass wires with temperature index is established at the company "Aquaton"; high-tech processing of natural stone is being introduced at the company "Verstatnyk" ("Machine-Operator").

The oblast is characterized by complicated conditions for agricultural production development, especially in the marshy woodlands in the northern part of the oblast. First of all, it is low natural fertility of the soil, a swampy and excessively humid territory, a high level of the south territories erosion, small ground fragmentation, and, especially, their high radioactive pollution density caused by the accident at the Chorobyl Power Plant.

All of that calls for continuous land treatment, meliorative, anti-erosion, environmental and technical-economic measures targeted at agricultural works productivity support.

In the oblast there are 439 market-type farms, 8 state agricultural enterprises, 430 farms. They use over 671, 000 hectares of arable land, including 478, 000 hectares of cropland.

The average annual number of people working at the agricultural production is 65,000.

Agricultural enterprises of all property forms specialize in growing cereals, potatoes, sugar beets, long-fibred flax, and meat and dairy production.

In the gross output of agricultural products (for all farm categories), the share of cattle-breeding is 46.4%, while that of plant growing is 53.6%.

The oblast is favorably located and has a varied transport network.Transportation services to the local economy and public are rendered by three types of transport – rail, highway, and air.

The total operational railway length of the Rivne section of Lviv railway is 1145.4 km. The section comprises 6 structural subdivisions, 70 lines, stations and social-cultural enterprises. The length of common use highways is 4997.1 km, including those with solid surface of 4899.8 km. Over 4,000 people are employed at automotive enterprises. The conveyance volumes in 1999 were 2,200,000 tons of cargo and over 51,700,000 passengers. The main highways Kyiv-Warsaw, Kyiv-Brest, Kyiv-Lviv and Kyiv-Chernivtsi pass through the oblast. The Rivne airport has the status of an international one and can receive aircraft of any kind.

Communications services are provided by Rivne offices of the Ukrainian State Telecommunications Enterprise "Ukrtelecom" and the Ukrainian State Telecommunications Enterprise "Ukrposhta". The number of people employed at these enterprises is, respectively, 2769 and 1920. Currently and for the past several years, quasielectronic and electronic systems of communications have been introduced in the oblast.

In 1999, Rivne carried out its foreign economic activity with partners from 66 countries. The external commodity circulation was USD 142,100,000, including USD 75,500,000 of exports, and USD 66,600,000 of imports.

The largest volumes of exports were to Italy – 18.0% of the total oblast imports, Germany – 15.9%, Russia Federation – 14.1%, India – 12.0%, Belarus – 5.2%, Slovenia – 4.2%, Poland – 4.3%, Switzerland – 2.9%, and Lithuania – 2.0%.

The largest imports were from Russia Federation – 24.8%, Germany – 14.0%, USA – 12.5%, Brazil – 7.7%, Belarus – 4.9%, Netherlands – 3.0%, Czech Republic – 4.8%, Guatemala – 4.0%, Sweden – 2.6%.

The largest sales volumes within the export structure are those of chemical compounds (cyclohexagone, etc) (33.3%). Fertilizers comprise 15.6%, timber and goods 13.4%, glass and goods 3.9%, electric machines 3.5%, sugar and confectionery items 2.3%.

The basis for imports is provided by oil and the products of petroleum refining – 16.1%, salt, sulfur, stucco and plaster, cement – 12.6%, sugar and confectionery items – 11.8%, organic chemical compounds – 11.3%, machines and equipment – 8.2%.

The total volume of direct foreign investment into the oblast by January 1, 2000, was USD 46,200,000. The largest investments were made by non-residents: Canada – USD 14,000,000, Great Britain – USD 13,600,000, Russia Federation – USD 10,700,000, USA – USD 3,400,000, Germany – USD 1,100,000. Altogether, foreign investments from 21 countries were received by Rivne oblast.

The most attractive sectors for investment are: construction materials industry – USD 27,500,000, pipeline transportation – USD 11,700,000, trade and public catering – USD 2,000,000, agriculture – USD 1,600,000, production kinds of consumer services – USD 1,000,000.

To improve our region’s attractiveness for investment we will be introducing a special investment policy in five northern rayons of the oblast envisaging tax and customs benefits, etc. The special investment policy in Rivne oblast will become an impetus for a new wave of fruitful cooperation between Rivne businesses and potential foreign and domestic investors.

In Rivne oblast over 600 deposits of mineral resources of regional significance have been prospected: construction and facing stone, chalk, kaolin, feldspar raw materials, basalts, cement raw materials, considerable stores of peat, sand, brick and tile raw materials, mineral and fresh waters, etc, among which over 100 deposits are being exploited.

Recently, there have appeared prospects for finding industrial deposits of phosphate raw materials and native copper.

The oblast is the only one in Ukraine having two prospected deposits of a gem – amber; they are exploited by the state enterprise "Ukrburshtyn" ("Ukrainian Amber"). Besides, exploration work is under way at three more sites.

19 out of 35 deposits of construction stone which were explored in detail, are exploited at present. The residual explored stores (500,000,000 cubic meters) of the construction stone guarantee further development of the production.

In the extreme east of the oblast 8 deposits of facing stone with shallow enough bedding for openworking with total store of 16,500,000 cubic meters have been explored. Decorative pink and bluish-gray granites of Klesiv and Osmolinsk deposits are being exploited and used for making gravestones, monuments, etc. Extraction of granite could be considerably increased, as well as that of dark decorative stone – Vyriv diorites, diabases and gabbroids.

Columnar basalts are extracted which are also used in architectural and construction works.

In the oblast, 6 basalt deposits have been explored for quarrystone and macadam, with stores about 150,000,000 cubic meters; 4 of them are exploited with the possible manual extraction of about 800,000 cubic meters. Using the world practice resulting from the research done in Ukraine, it is possible to use basalts more rationally as raw materials for manufacturing high-quality isolation materials and stone-cast ware. Articles from basalt fiber are durable, heat- and oxidation-resistant, and have a small specific weight. Based on basalt fiber, manufacturing of light heat- and soundproof articles was developed and mastered to be used in shipbuilding and aircraft-building.

6 sites were identified with shallow bedding (up to 20 m) of phosphorites with a total resource of five-oxide phosphor up to 10,000,000 tons. Exploration and industrial exploitation of the most promising of the sites will start this year.

With sufficient funding, the Rivne oblast is capable of creating a mineral and raw materials resource base of national significance for producing native copper.

The most promisng directions for developing the oblast’s mineral and raw material basis are: an integrated use of basalts, intensification of amber-extraction works, openworking of agricultural ores – phosphorites, intensification of extraction of local raw materials for construction materials manufacturing, as well as that of mineral waters.