Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[Firn]

An interesting map brought into play by Invest Gazeta. This has been (quite obviously) disputed by the Russophil and discussed in the comments below.



I can not dig deep enough to get a proper understanding of the facts, still I find the discussion interesting. In Italy it is also a hot topic but the facts are far clearer.

AP says:
February 3, 2014 at 3:07 pm

What I’ve heard agrees with the chart you posted rather than the article you translated. To a certain extent it makes sense: Ukraine is fantastically corrupt, the ruling party is linked to the Eastern oligarchs. Why wouldn’t they underpay in terms of taxes, given their connection to the government? Ukraine’s new tax laws, for example, favor large businesses of the sort that dominate the Eastern economy over small and medium-sized businesses more typical of the western parts of the country:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/...6AF1U020101116

The answer:

Fedia Kriukov says:
February 3, 2014 at 4:36 pm

Upon some further consideration, I can’t say that you’re entirely wrong. I added a column to my spreadsheet above, calculating “Tax per capita as % of GRP per capita”. As you can see, the East does not have the same tax burden as the Center (your theory that Ukrainian tax laws favor large businesses could account for that). But the West’s tax burden is still the lightest of all.

So to recap all of this:
1) The West is the poorest part of the country in terms of GRP per capita
2) The West pays the least amount of taxes per capita (naturally follows from (1))
3) The West has the lightest tax burden even in relation to its meager GRP per capita (just under that of the South)
4) The West is the most heavily subsidized part of the country

I think this should settle the East vs West debate.

One other note is that usually only the Lvov region is used to represent the West. However, while Lvov is the richest and most developed region of the West, it is only one of 7 western regions in that part of the country, and is not representative of their overall level. Even then, Lvov is merely on par with poorest regions of the rest of the country. There are very few regions outside of West Ukraine that are economically surpassed by Lvov.

All rather interesting stuff, but as I said I will have to stay on the sidelines of that discussion.

A paper about FDI, the capital plays clearly a special role. Overall subventions gained by political power/corruption can be key elements of shareholder profit, as Boing and other US companies show. Taking from the poor to give to the rich is of course not an US invention.