Ukrainian legislation obliges data holders, in particular, the State Tax Service, the State Statistics Service, and the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, to publish and regularly update the financial statements of companies in the format of open data on the data.gov.ua portal.
Some NGOs and experts, including the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO), YouControl, Bihus.Info, the civil movement “Chesno”, OpenUp and Transparency International, stated that by announcing a joint appeal to the relevant agencies acting as data holders to comply with legal requirements immediately during a briefing in the UCMC. The Anti-Corruption Action Centre, Clarity Project, Slidstvo.Info, the NGO “Electronic Democracy” and Oleksiy Ivankin, CEO of Opendatabot, also joined the appeal.
Under the Law “On Accounting and Financial Reporting in Ukraine”, financial statements of companies (both public and private) can not be classified as a trade secret. The Law of Ukraine “On Access to Public Information” stipulates that all information available to state bodies should be provided upon request and made public. This is especially true of data of public interest. The requirements to publish financial statements are included in the Action Plan on Implementation of the Association Agreement with the EU (paragraph 830).
There is no need to create additional resources to publish financial reporting data, as there is a state open data portal data.gov.ua.
Publication of companies’ financial statements in the format of open data will have many positive effects:
- the data publication will help eliminate data abuse (in particular, the leakage and sale of data in shadow markets)
- the data of a particular company will be available to potential counterparties to assess the risk of cooperation and avoid unfair counterparties (according to PWC, 36% of those who committed the most significant economic crimes or frauds are the third parties (counterparties)
- potential employees can check the employer’s financial position
- the publication of financial statements will provide an opportunity to check the company’s financial status when purchasing expensive goods or services (real estate, cars, tourist trips, insurance, etc.)
- data by industry and region are of interest to both entrepreneurs (assessment of the profitability of companies in the sector, the competitive environment, etc.) and journalists and analysts (from economic to anti-corruption investigations)
- the availability of data in an open database will facilitate the participation of businesses in tenders by reducing the number of certificates that should be submitted.
You can read the appeal and sign it as an individual or organization here. The deadline is Thursday, June 11, at 10:00. After collecting signatures, requests for access to public information together with the appeal will be sent to the State Statistics Service, the Ministry of Justice, and the State Tax Service.
Contact person: Julia, 0509979360
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This material is prepared by the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO), an independent expert and analytical center funded by the European Union under the FORBIZ project and within the framework of EU4Business Initiative.