Assessment of Ukraine’s regions competitiveness

The article is devoted to the urgent problem of assessing the regions competitiveness. The subject of investigation is the main approaches to managing Ukraine's competitiveness in the context of global challenges. The purpose of investigation is to analyze the current situation in the country and to determine the further development of the national economy and its regions. During the research the methods of systems analysis and economic analysis were used for substantiating the directions (vectors) and determining the factors characterizing competitiveness of regions and national economy. In the article the authors analyzed the existing domestic and foreign approaches to estimation of the competitiveness and argued the lack of a unified approach in this issue solving. It is determined that the regions competitiveness is achieved by growing the labor productivity, creating a favorable investment environment and the active perception of new technologies. It is established that a competitive region attracts foreign investments, forms social and economic stability and high living standards of population. It can conduct foreign trade effectively and achieve high productivity of the factors of production used. An awareness of objective inequality of social and economic development of Ukraine's regions requires creating the effective mechanisms for stimulating regions development which potential driving force is the regional competitiveness strategy. Through competition mechanisms it is based on activating the territory internal potential, priority using of each particular region unique competitive advantages, providing the effective conditions for inter-regional competition, which are expected in the future to ensure a qualitative improvement of population living standards. The main directions for increasing the regions competitiveness, proposed by authors, are stable macroeconomic environment for investment, effective regime of the state's competitive policy, active foreign investment strategy, integrated support for innovative technologies, clusters creation, free access to financial resources, and development of effective infrastructure.