00:00Ukraine just recently opened the embassy in the Philippines in December 2024.
00:09I arrived just in March 2025, so the first six months were fully booked up in Manila to do all the courtesy calls, etc.
00:22And one of the main priorities for the embassy is not only to develop the government-to-government cooperation between Ukraine and the Philippines,
00:34but also to decentralize cooperation and to go people-to-people at the regional levels.
00:41Regional diplomacy is also a priority for us.
00:44That's why we started traveling around the Philippines in order to get to know the LGUs, the mayors, the governors,
00:54and to present them to Ukraine and the Ukrainian cities.
00:58Because in Ukraine, during the last 11 years, we went through the decentralization reform,
01:04and many cities are open to find the sister cities around the world.
01:09And I know that, as for now, we only have one sister cities agreement from 2010 between the province of Cebu and Crimea.
01:19But now Crimea is annexated by Russia, so this cooperation is on hold.
01:25That's why we decided that we need to build up a network of sister cities between Ukraine and the Philippines.
01:31And Cebu and the Cebu province are our main partners in building the first sister cities community.
01:42Because we already had some meetings between the Quezon city in Metro Manila and the Baguio city in Luzon.
01:50And now we are here in Cebu and we are hoping to build a cooperation between Cebu city and Chernivtsi city.
01:57And also hopefully between the province Cebu and the Chernivtsi region.
02:03And also between Cordova and Lapu-Lapu with other Ukrainian cities.
02:09So we have a good friends here in Cebu, Mr. Curtis Go, who also helped us to arrange the meetings,
02:19not only with the governmental officials, but also with local businesses,
02:24the European Chamber of Commerce and the Cebu Chamber of Commerce.
02:28Because the second priority is also economical cooperation and trading investments.
02:35We are now working on a cross-governmental agreement to create a joint commission
02:41on trade investment and cooperation in science and technology.
02:46And also an MOU in agriculture between the Department of Agriculture
02:51and Ukrainian Ministry on Economics, Ecology and Agriculture.
02:56And I hope it will be also a good start for B2B.
03:00As Ukrainian businesses are interested in entering the markets of the Philippines.
03:06And I hope also that the Filipino businesses will be open to enter the markets of Ukraine.
03:11We see potential in agriculture because Ukraine is a known breadbasket of Europe.
03:17We already export wheat and sunflower oil to the Philippines.
03:23But the numbers are not so high.
03:26So our businesses are really interested in entering also meat markets,
03:31also beverages, sweet products.
03:35And I hope also not only in the agriculture, but also we are interested in IT.
03:45Bye.
03:51We'll see you next time.
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