The Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO) expert Bohdan Andryuschenko believes that we should denationalize enterprises and veterinary and phytosanitary agencies wisely. Denationalization of hospitals and laboratories remained in the system, which practically has no public enterprises that would require an appropriate servicing, rudimentary is a demand of our time. Especially under circumstances, when budgetary expenditures to support them are decreased every year. This year’s funding that doesn’t cover even a fifth of veterinary and phytosanitary needs confirms this fact. The change of regulations in the system, when the state should move to purchasing needed services from authorized agencies of any ownership instead of keeping the network, is also of current interest.
At the same time, the public policy requires that the network of hospitals and laboratories as private institutions will continue to be specialized. Such a comprehensive sphere is, among other things, an essential element of the state security in terms of food safety and preventing the spread of diseases common to animals and humans.
Therefore, privatization of veterinary and phytosanitary agencies can’t be conducted under general rules, but only with certain terms established by the law: keeping the specialization of institutions; the priority right of labour collectives to buy; participation in government monitoring programs, etc.
It is clear that not all institutions should be privatized: in particular, national institutions and a number of central and regional specialized agencies should remain in state ownership to ensure the arbitration, work out methods and rules, and so on.
The Better Regulation Delivery Office supports the idea of such privatization and the need to establish clear and transparent procedures and restrictions in law. We will continue to participate in discussions and work on the recently presented draft law “On Amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On Peculiarities of Property Privatization in Agro-Industrial Complex” to regulate the privatization process of veterinary and phytosanitary agencies. This law is much needed for veterinary and phytosanitary sectors. However, only as a separate law but not as amendments to the existing one.
At one time, functioning problems of collective farms were solved in this way, because it was possible to denationalize them by adopting the Law of Ukraine “On Peculiarities of Property Privatization in Agro-Industrial Complex”. This provided those who worked with an opportunity to get their share of property and land and became a fundamental principle for further activities of enterprises in the market environment. It is needless to say that things didn’t run smoothly, but national rules were established and started to work.