The First Vice Prime Minister, Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine Stepan Kubiv said that at the briefing devoted to the regular ease of doing business ranking “Doing Business 2017” on October 26.
“Ukraine took the 80th position in the ranking compared to the 83rd position of last year. This means plus 3 positions. We hoped for a better result,” Stepan Kubiv said and added that some implemented reforms haven’t been reflected in the ranking of that year because of peculiarities of the calculation method, however, the current Government had a settled plan to significantly improve the Ukraine’s position the following year.
Stepan Kubiv described the key changes in the ranking that have influenced the Ukraine’s position, including:
protecting minority shareholders rights (plus 18 positions);
enforcing contracts (plus 17 positions);
taxation (plus 23 positions);
registering a business (plus 10 positions);
getting electricity (plus 7 positions);
international trade (minus 6 positions).
While commenting on other issues regarding the peculiarities of this year’s Doing Business calculation for Ukraine, Stepan Kubiv said that making changes in the tax code (including the reduced Unified social tax), providing the open access to data on real estate properties, introducing a “single window” at Ukrainian customs that began to operate after the reference point for this year’s Doing Business report haven’t been considered for Ukraine because of technical peculiarities of the calculation method. Finally, the World Bank also didn’t considered for the ranking the access of notaries to real estate registers as registrars that speeds up the property registration procedures.
“However, this will be reflected in the ranking of next year,” Stepan Kubiv said. He added that despite the significant work of the Government and non-governmental organizations, most of changes should be adopted by the Parliament.
“For example, simplifying the connection to electricity supply networks should be legally regulated and can be included in the Law on Electricity Market,” Kubiv said. The First Vice Prime Minister emphasized that a number of draft laws designed to improve Ukraine’s positions in the ranking have been registered in the Verkhovna Rada, and the Ukraine’s progress in the Doing Business of 2018 largely depends on people’s deputies.
“Having analyzed these reasons, the BRDO offered to change a strategy of point changes introduced by certain draft laws,” the head of the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO) Oleksiy Honcharuk explained. Instead of this, the Better Regulation Delivery Office has developed a unified draft law aimed at improving Ukraine’s positions and its implementation will provide about 35 positions in the ranking.
“This draft law covers more than 7 areas of business – starting from registration to enforcing contracts and resolving bankruptcy issues. 14 key initiatives of the unified draft law will change rules of the game significantly,” Honcharuk said.
According to him, in case if this draft law is approved, we will get simplified procedures, enhanced possibilities to communicate with the government without the participation of officials via online services and the improved access to information. Finally, this will have a significant impact on restoring the trust between businesses and the government. Oleksiy Honcharuk said that this document was currently in the process of discussion and evaluation by stakeholders.