Instead of giving our veteran entrepreneurs a "fishing rod" that will allow them to constantly catch fish for themselves and the state, the government can only offer them the services of a "fish inspection" and a symbolic "fishing day" every few months," Vitaliy Gersak, head of the NGO ‘Free and True,’ reflects on the problems of veteran business in Ukraine in his article on the Correspondent website.
The author notes that in the United States, veteran-owned businesses account for almost 6% of enterprises, annually earn more than $900 billion and employ 3.9 million people. Its activities are regulated by at least 4 separate federal and state laws. About 20 separate federal programs operate in this area, providing veterans with grants, soft loans, loan guarantees, financial compensation, assistance in accessing government contracts, business mentoring, business training, and entrepreneurship education.
In addition, the U.S. government is constantly striving to increase the opportunities for veterans to receive government contracts. This is done both by encouraging large companies to engage veteran-owned businesses as subcontractors when implementing large-scale federal projects, and by direct quotas. Today, 3% of federal procurement contracts are awarded annually to veteran-owned businesses, and this figure is planned to increase to 20% in the future.
Veteran-owned businesses have actually existed in Ukraine for almost a decade, starting with the first businesses of ATO veterans. As of February 23, 2022, more than 12 thousand veteran-owned businesses were registered in Ukraine. They have their own recognizable brands, they are widely known, they work, motivate, teach, unite, but... from a legal point of view, they do not exist in Ukraine, because there is still no law that would define the activities of our veteran entrepreneurs. Consequently, there are no incentives to encourage it, no unique rights and special prerogatives that it could rely on, no official statistics and no government agency that would deal with the issues of its development, etc.
Today, we have only 5 specialized national projects/programs in this area. The only mechanism of practical financial support for veteran entrepreneurs in Ukraine today is grant assistance from executive authorities and non-governmental institutions. However, only a few hundred such grants are issued annually.
Veterans' business in Ukraine exists not because the state pays attention to it and cares about the welfare of the defenders, but because we have a whole army of socially active veterans who have become businessmen in their own right, Gersak said.