Working meetings with representatives of professional associations in the field of subsoil use were held from 10-13 November.
During the consultations, top managers of the following organizations submitted their proposals to the new Subsoil Code: the Association of Sand Miners (Vadym Pelykh), the National Extractive Industries Association of Ukraine (Ksenia Orynchak), the Association of Gas Producers of Ukraine (Artem Petrenko), as well as the Federation of Employers of Ukraine (Dmytro Oliynyk and Oleksandr Yavorskyi).
According to Bohdan Borukhovskyi, First Deputy Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine, the new draft Subsoil code should take into account business comments. The Ministry expects to complete discussions on the draft Code with stakeholders by the end of the year.
“The new Subsoil Code will be a unified document that will introduce uniform rules in the field of subsoil use, simplify the process of obtaining special subsoil use permits for businesses and create conditions for developing the industry and attracting investments,” Bohdan Borukhovskyi said.
Simon Pow, Expert Team Leader at the EU’s project “New Subsoil Code of Ukraine”, thanked for the common vision of subsoil use reform between the project experts, the Ministry of Ecology, and the European Union delegation representatives.
Volodymyr Holovatenko, Senior Policy Advisor at the EU’s project “New Subsoil Code of Ukraine”, noted that the dialogue proposed by the associations and the Ministry had proved its effectiveness.
“All stakeholders, with no exception, pointed out the too detailed provisions and the fact that most of the procedures mentioned in the draft should be contained in bylaws. I will try to explain our logic. We proceeded from the existing problems related to vague rules, which are open to more than one interpretation, usually against the business. Procedural provisions currently contained in separate bylaws tend to change dozens of times. As a result, state institutions face lawsuits, and business owners lose their time and money, the economy of the state loses revenues. I am grateful for the issues raised during the dialogue. I hope that all comments and remarks will be processed and taken into account this week,” Volodymyr Holovatenko said.
The new Subsoil Code, in particular, proposes to determine the subsoil use types and terms, provide for transparent subsoil use through auctions, non-auction procedures, and production sharing agreements, regulate the validity of special permits for subsoil use and establish a transparent method of estimating their value.
To develop the Code, the activity of the working group established at the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine as the body responsible for formulating the relevant state policy was resumed. The team of the project “New Subsoil Code of Ukraine” funded by the European Union and implemented by the Consortium consisting of Projekt-Consult (Germany), MinPol (Austria), and Better Regulation Delivery Office (Ukraine) experts joined the development of the Code.