Industry

3.2.4 Industry

Historically, the large industrial centres of European Russia have been concentrated in the upper part of the Dnipro Basin. Most industrial activity is concentrated in the Smolensk, Bryansk and Kursk Oblasts, accounting for 90% of the overall industrial capacity of the Russian part of the Dnipro Basin. This area contains over 4,000 industrial enterprises, a skilled workforce and high-technology production capacities. Industry in this region represents 3.5% of Russia’s industrial capacity, and accounts for 5.6% of the country’s power generation. The industrial sector is dominated by processing industries (Figure 3.7). After a decade of continuous decline, industrial production output has shown an increase since 2000.

Figure 3.7 Percentage contribution of the main processing industries within the Dnipro Basin to the total Russian industrial capacity.

In Belarus, industrial production output grew continuously between 1996–2000 at an average annual growth rate of 10.5%. In that period, production output in the chemical/petrochemical industry increased by 51.6%. The machine-building industry has also shown an increase in output. In 2000, there was a 1.5-fold increase in cement production output compared to 1995 levels and significant growth was achieved in the industrial production and construction sectors (by 45% and 15%, respectively).

Historically, there has been intensive industrial development in the Ukrainian part of the Dnipro Basin. The region currently accounts for over 60% of the total industrial production capacity of the country, including 60.7% of its heavy industry and 60.6% of light and food-processing industries.

Industrial facilities are distributed very unevenly over the territory of the Basin. More than two thirds of the regional industrial capacity is concentrated within less than one third of the region’s area, namely the Kyiv Oblast, Kyiv itself, and the Oblasts of Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia. Industrial production density is highest in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts, accounting for 43.6% of the industrial output of the Dnipro Basin. The Kyiv Oblast and Kyiv itself account for over 15% of the regional industrial output. Relatively little industry is contained in the southern and Polessie areas of the Basin, which together accounts for only 9.3% of output. The industrial production output of the Ukrainian part of the Dnipro Basin is shown in Table 3.5.

Table 3.5 Industrial production output of the Ukrainian part of the Dnipro Basin

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