OREANDA-NEWS. October 17, 2012. Metinvest held final hearings on its Social Partnership Programmes 2013 in nine cities and towns of its operations. More than 200 projects were discussed at the meetings of expert boards consisting of national and local government officials, representatives of broad public, expert community, Metinvest’s operating businesses and the management company. Priority projects will be included into Metinvest's Social Partnership Programme 2013.

The work on the programme started in July 2012 in nine Ukrainian cities and towns: Mariupol, Makeevka, Avdeevka, Yenakievo, Khartsyzsk, Komsomolskoye, Krasnodon, Krivoy Rog and Novgorodskoye village. Each locality established an expert board consisting of representatives of national and local governments, broad public, Metinvest's operating businesses and management company. The key objective of the boards is to devise projects aimed at developing and upgrading social infrastructure and creating additional conditions to improve the quality of people's life.

Selection of the projects is based on analysis of social and economic situation in the cities and towns and opinion poll among 10,000 residents in the communities of the company's presence. These measures helped to clearly understand many outstanding problems that should be addressed in the regions of operations.

Focus areas in the Social Partnership Programme are health, access to improved drinking water, education, favourable business environment and development of social infrastructure. These priorities sit at the core of Metinvest's social investment policy.

Metinvest is an international vertically integrated mining and metals group of companies that manages assets at each stage of production chain - from mining coal and iron ore and producing coke to making semi-finished and finished steel products, pipes, coils and other high value-added products. The Group integrates mining and steelmaking companies located in Ukraine, Europe and the United States and sales network covering all key global markets. Metinvest's strategic vision is to become the leading vertically integrated steel producer in Europe, delivering sustainable growth and profitability resilient to business cycles and providing investors with returns at above the industry benchmarks. The major shareholders of Metinvest B.V., a parent company of the Metinvest Group, are SCM Group (71.25%) and Smart Holding (23.75%), which manage the company on a partnership basis.