(Corrects 100 companies to 1,000 in paragraph 4)
By Max Hunder
KYIV, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Ukrainian arms producers have received the first wartime licences to export their goods abroad, the secretary of Kyiv's national security and defence council said on Thursday.
Kyiv recently took the politically sensitive decision to export weapons while it fights a war against Russia as it seeks funds to expand its domestic defence industry and tries to use its innovative weapons as diplomatic leverage to strengthen its alliances.
In a statement on social media, Rustem Umerov did not specify how many enterprises had received a license but said Ukraine's annual production capacity in the sector exceeds $55 billion. Umerov said the interdepartmental government commission which approves arms exports had already held its first meeting in eights months.
Since it was attacked by Russia in February 2022, Ukraine's defence sector has boomed, and now comprises more than 1,000 companies, most of them new private sector enterprises.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said recently Ukraine has 450 drone producers; small and cheap Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are now responsible for a majority of strikes on battlefield targets.
"In the areas of UAVs, electronic warfare and reconnaissance, our capabilities already exceed the volume of domestic procurement," Umerov wrote. "Coordinated exports allow us to attract investment, scale up production and launch new technologies for the Ukrainian army."
(Reporting by Max Hunder, adiditonal reporting by Yuliia Dysa; Editing by Daniel Flynn)
