This was stated by the BRDO Board Member and Construction Sector head, Midland Development Ukraine co-owner and CEO Olena Shulyak at the Open Mind Conference.
Obtaining a construction permit is a complicated and multi-stage procedure. For the purpose of identifying its problem areas and assessing directly not a declared, but real level of favourableness of the DABI’s licensing system for real investors, the BRDO Office decided to monitor a real case: an investor from Chernivtsi tries to get a permit to build a modern cultural and business complex of CC3 class in accordance with the law and without bribes. With the consent of the investor, the Better Regulation Delivery Office publishes all steps, starting from preparing a package of documents, on its website and social media.
According to Olena Shulyak, the entrepreneur provided the State Architectural and Construction Inspection of Ukraine with a set of necessary documents weighing several kilograms to fulfill the requirements of the licensing system as required by the law. He should have been answered through a highly publicized “Transparent DABI” system on February 4.
“The fact is that the problem is not with the “transparent” or “not transparent” DABI. The procedure itself contains opportunities for manipulation and violations to be committed with impunity. If you try to automate this mess, then you will just get the automated mess. The same thing happened in our case with obtaining permits through the so-called “Transparent DABI”: the investor from Chernivtsi received a refusal with a delay of 5 days (since the refusal itself was dated February 1), and it was signed by a person not authorized to take any actions related to construction permits (according to the DABI procedure). In addition, having analyzed the refusal, we found out numerous evidences of the procedure inconsistency, from the mistakes in design documents, which already received a positive expert conclusion and, logically, couldn’t contain any mistakes, to actual comments such as “data was indicated in the wrong line”.
Such real cases and not some virtual ones characterize the level of interest in investments and investors shown by government agencies. This example is a litmus test for the reform. Changes in the country should be real and not the fictitious ones. And based on this real example, we in the BRDO Office are ready to help the state to get out of the comfort zone of the past and create modern effective mechanisms in dealing with the licensing system. And investors will give back by creating jobs, providing tax revenues and simply by promoting a country’s reputation in the business communit