The purpose of the article is to develop the conceptual foundations of the investment support of the food industry of Ukraine on the basis of existing practice of statistical research. Methodology. The following analysis is carried out: evaluation of factors, overall assessment of the country's economic development prospects, absence of risks for investments due to military operations and other force majeure circumstances, stability of the legislative framework, etc. through interstate rating comparisons. Results. It is proved that the competitiveness of the country in the world market is not a sufficient condition for the development of investment support for the food industry. It is known that in the domestic market each industry competes with others for investment capital. Important factors, in this case, are: the capacity of the market, its growth prospects and the average level of profitability of economic activity. Thus, to attract both foreign and domestic investment, the food industry of Ukraine should correspond to a high level of these indicators, compared with other sectors of the economy. Within the framework of the developed concept this problem should be solved with the help of a multifactor model for assessing the competitiveness of the industry. Practical implications. According to calculations, the share of capital investments in the food industry in 2019 was 5.9% of their total volume in the economy. At the same time, food industry enterprises provided 8.2% of the country's gross domestic product and 11.6% of total production, including intermediate consumption. These comparisons show that today insufficient attention is paid to investment in this sector of the economy. Value/originality. The methods proposed in the article, unlike the existing ones, are based on the use of a set of economic and mathematical methods and models and allow for a quantitative assessment of the proposed solutions.
