The objectives of the study are to generalise the modern scientific and practical instrumentarium for ensuring competitive development of machine-building enterprises, forming the main directions of strategic development with substantiation of the system of measures for their implementation. The article highlights the issues of forming a strategy for competitive development of machine-building enterprises in Ukraine, which is based on the need to create a legal, investment and innovation environment for the effective development of machine-building enterprises. Formation of the legal environment implies the need to develop and adopt regulatory and legislative acts aimed at creating favourable tax, customs, credit and institutional conditions for competitive functioning of machine-building enterprises. Formation of a competitive investment environment involves a system of measures related to the need to attract additional financial resources, in particular: introduction of a mechanism of state guarantees subject to portfolio investment, conclusion of direct long-term agreements between enterprises and foreign investors; conclusion of joint agreements with local governments, central government agencies and agricultural production entities; formation of non-statutory formations in the form of clusters, etc. The formation of an innovative competitive environment involves a system of measures aimed at introducing various organisational, production and financial innovations, such as diversification of production; introduction of a marketing management system; development of knowledge-intensive products through the purchase of modern state-of-the-art equipment and energy-saving production lines; and ensuring the availability of highly qualified personnel.