Self-regulation as a form of management and self-control of entrepreneurs reduces administrative burdens on businesses, promotes higher standards of activity, and therefore – better protection of consumers’ interests. That’s how it works in the world.
In Ukraine, it is possible to create a self-regulatory organization only in 15 areas, 4 of which do not have proper regulation of its establishment and operation. Officially, only 24 self-regulatory organizations are recognized in our country. It’s funny statistics, is not it?
Moreover, dozens of self-regulatory associations and organizations with a similar function can not obtain an official status, as there is no legal basis to do so for them.
Last August, the Action Plan for the implementation of the Self-Regulation Concept in Ukraine developed by the BRDO Office together with the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade was approved to stimulate changes in this area.
At present, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine issued a Draft Law of Ukraine “On Self-Regulatory Organizations”.
BRDO is ready to participate in its finalization, but we need your feedbacks and comments on this draft law. You can leave your feedback here.
Over the past two years, the market of oil and gas subsoil access has been blocked in Ukraine, and this means losing funds and reputation in eyes of investors. The reason is legislative inconsistencies and overlapping between subsoil access tools such as production sharing agreements (PSA) and auctions. BRDO experts have prepared a comprehensive research of the market situation having analyzed both approaches: https://regulation.gov.ua/dialogue/energetika/47-rinok-nafti
So, Production Sharing Agreements (PSA) is a traditional tool of public-private partnership, however, we still have a negative experience with it. During 2007-2013, PSAs were concluded for 8 subsoil plots, but none of them was used for hydrocarbon extractions.
Auctions are a more effective mechanism for allocation of subsoil use rights. But the problem is that they are not fully implemented by the state: in 2013-2017, 84% of special permits were provided without auctions, and there were no auctions at all in 2017. Only in October 2018, the State Service of Geology and Subsoil auctioned two gas subsoil plots.
According to market participants’ statements, there were delays in holding auction, in particular, because of the preparation of subsoil plots, in which the market was interested the most, for PSA tenders. That is, legislative inconsistencies led to blocking the market development for almost 2 years.
How to prevent such situations in the future? Based on the market analysis, our experts propose to change the procedure for selection of plots, which may be allocated through PSAs by establishing clear criteria:
Plots with special permits, which have not been sold auctions for 3 or more times are allowed to be covered by PSAs;
Plots in the remotest areas (continental shelf development, exclusive (marine) economic zone development, development of plots in the United Forces Operation zone) are allowed to be covered by PSAs;
Plots with complicated extraction conditions (shale deposits and depleted deposits development) are allowed to be covered by PSAs.
All other plots should be sold at transparent auctions. Ukraine should be attractive to investors, the procedure should be open and the budget should be filled with money!
Soon, we will present all the conclusions and proposals that follow from our research in more detail. Follow the news.
There are 14 cities from all over Ukraine, which are already presented on the https://sbc.regulation.gov.ua/ platform! This means that in addition to general step-by-step instructions, they are localized to suit local specifics!
It’s very easy to localize the instructions for your city, and our office will help you with advice. We have also created an online cabinet for each city on the platform.
Each city adapted from 1 to 103 cases to meet local needs and simplify things for businesses. Well done! It gets better as it goes, so we encourage others to join us!
Source: Economichna Pravda
The current procedure to register land plots for construction purposes is cumbersome, non-transparent and corrupt. The Government can change it. If it finds that fit.
Every year, the population and business owners register about 1 million land plots.
Despite this, land registration for construction purposes is one of the most complicated real estate procedures, which is similar to solving equations with multiple unknown variables.
Apart from auctions, the registration will require to collect more than 50 paper documents, obtain more than 15 approvals, have 20 meetings with officials and then, if you are lucky enough, receive a cherished document confirming your right to ownership or use for one to three years.
In these years, not only meetings with local officials will become your routine. You will have to meet notaries, land surveyors, local deputies and even neighbors, who are owners of adjacent land plots.
As a result, business owners lose time and money to register the right, without which no construction project can be started. This applies not only to construction companies. Only in criminal cases, which have been investigated since 2015, damages to the state due to corruption in land relations were 450 million hryvnias.
A high level of corruption became possible due to the complexity and sticking points of the procedure for land registration, excessive number of approval procedures and documents and duplication of responsibilities of state agencies.
The StateGeoCadastre participates only in the land allocation procedure for three times: it approves documents, conducts their examination and enter the data into the register. Who benefits from such a complex scheme?
The first group is officials. The desire to retain control over the registration of land plots dominates over common sense, since each visit to officials for approval is an opportunity for their additional earnings.
The second group is deputies. There is no secret to anyone, under which schemes land cases are put to a vote in local councils, and why one cases have been gathered dust for years, while others are in the session hall.
The third group is land surveyors, appraisers and notaries. The more complex the scheme, the more rapidly the revenues of land surveying “businesses” grow.
Meanwhile, constructors keep going around in circles. In Ukraine, land legislation was developed in such a way that it is almost impossible to obtain a land plot without violations. They have to give bribes to avoid responsibility.
The current land registration procedure should be transparent, since there is both a public cadastral map and data viewing services for the State Register of Property Rights to Real Estate. However, these systems only partially reflect the land registration procedure and do not show the latest changes.
When registering a land plot, the state applies 21 instruments of state regulation, only four of which are electronic. The analysis of regulation shows that at least six instruments are useless. They can easily cancel them saving money and time for business.
This includes receiving a land availability certificate from the State Statistics Service, approving a land survey project by the StateGeoCadastre, conducting a state examination of land management documents, getting a permit to conduct an expert monetary evaluation, having an extract on normative monetary land evaluation from engineering documentation and approving the sale of state-owned and municipal land plots to foreign legal entities.
Another 14 instruments should be improved eliminating duplication and making them electronic. Of course, a low level of computer skills of users and a lack of broadband communication channels, especially in rural areas, do not facilitate the rapid introduction of electronic circulation of documents.
At the interim stage, we can consider the use of both paper and electronic records management. The automation of land registration is a long process, consisting of two dozen basic procedures. We can start small: replace paper land management documents with electronic ones.
In the long run, it is necessary to create electronic services to align boundaries with neighbors, use additional reality technologies on the maps, publish and show all the stages of land registration.
It is necessary to digitize maps of land management, forest management, environmental and urban planning documentation to include them into state cadastres. It is also necessary to scan and provide public access to materials of sharing state and agrarian lands that will allow to design a land plot without a field visit.
To start changes, we just need the desire of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and the StateGeoCadastre to transform the current long, cumbersome and non-transparent land registration procedure into an accessible and clear service for citizens and businesses.
On January 8, the Order of the Ministry of Finance No.936 of 26/11/2018, which approved Regulations on the Interdepartmental Working Group on the Implementation of Innovative Solutions to Register Payment Transactions (hereinafter – the IWG), entered into force.
The IWG’s task is to implement the Government’s Decision enriched in the CMU Resolution No.472 of 13/05/2018 “On the implementation of the relevant pilot project…”. The introduction of simplified procedures for using cash registers was also established in the Memorandum of Ukraine with the IMF on economic and financial policy of December 5, 2018, in particular, by introducing new technologies.
The Better Regulation Delivery Office takes an active part in the work of the IWG and expects the practical implementation of decisions approved in 2018 to facilitate the use of PTRs, namely:
We appeal to manufacturers of cash registers, developers of specialized software, non-governmental organizations and banking institutions to constructively cooperate in improving the conditions of state regulation of trade rules in Ukraine. Please send the proposals at [email protected]
Excessive burden on businesses or “well-being” of the population? We are convinced that receiving sanitary and epidemiological certificates for goods imported into Ukraine is just about the last one!
For example, moccasin shoes require one certificate, and sneakers – another one! Each certificate costs from 3 to 15 thousand hryvnias, and if 50 companies import the same product, each of them should receive a certificate, and in addition, provide a sample of products for examination on non-repayable terms. Such rules are particularly burdensome for small and medium-sized businesses, and in general, they result in spending millions. At the same time, the imported goods, for the most part, already have similar certificates from the EU. Ukrainian officials probably believe “that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. As a result, companies bear additional costs worth millions including them in a price paid by consumers.
To facilitate the cross-border trade, it would be appropriate to allow using certificates provided by authorized EU institutions in Ukraine as well. In this case, the opinions of BRDO experts and e-commerce market representatives coincide.
Today, the BRDO Office is launching a questionnaire to measure real business costs that result from this burdensome procedure as part of the review of e-commerce market regulation. By obtaining these data, we will seek to cancel ineffective regulation!
You can answer our questions at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScLJ1ThUiPMUpkcjIMgNTEkOvRy3x_RQvJODL8LfZJCDKhnhg/viewform
Find more information about the results of the rolling review of the e-commerce market and a range of barriers that hinder the market development at https://regulation.gov.ua/book/117-zelena-kniga-rinok-elektronnoi-komercii
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Source: the UCMC
As of December 6, 89% of funds from the State Road Fund’s grant for state roads (this is 23 billion hryvnias) were used. At the same time, 8.6 billion from funds of the State Road Fund for regions (this is 11.5 billion hryvnias) were used as of December 6. The director of the Department of Strategic Development of Road Market and Road Transportation at the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine Viktor Sasin announced that during a discussion at the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center.
“As we predicted, the situation has improved significantly by the end of the year, since the works completed at the end of the construction season are now delivered as acts. We expect this figure to improve further […]. There was no total fail in the country. Both local administrations and the Ukravtodor managed to do their job well,” Viktor Sasin said.
Viktor Sasin explained that the reasons why some regions were lagging behind by 10-15%, compared with the most active regions, were related mostly to organizational factors. “In regions, where quality teams are engaged in dealing with tenders, they keep up-to-date with work and the system works well. We should not forget about the blocking of tenders by contractors, since we also faced such cases,” he specified.
The head of the budget policy department of the Eidos Center Vladimir Tarnay mentioned the lack of progress in road safety measures, for which the Road Fund allocated 5% of funds (and no hryvnia was used), among topical issues and risks. There were no funds allocated for road certification and the system of road quality management. It is also a large imbalance between costs related to heavy, ordinary and medium repairs – 11.8 kilometers of roads and 589 kilometers respectively.
“We see a huge advantage of ordinary and medium repairs. There are certain risks here, because while we understand what standards heavy repairs should meet, these standards are vague for ordinary and medium repairs,” the expert said.
There are problems with the financing of municipal roads repairs, for which the regions can allocate up to 20% of funds from their grants. “Judging by the lists approved by regional state administrations, 10 regions allocated 0% of funds for municipal roads,” the expert of the Project Office for Sectoral Decentralization Vadym Oliynyk said. In his opinion, in the future, it is necessary to oblige the regions to allocate at least 10% of funds for municipal roads, because about 95% of them need repairs.
At the same time, according to the acting director of the Department of Roads, Transport and Communications of the Lviv Regional State Administration Roman Kokotaylo, the funds of local budgets are currently increased significantly, so they can finance road repairs without involving the funds of the State Road Fund. For example, in the Lviv region, more than 40 million hryvnias were allocated from the regional budget for municipal roads, and the local budgets provides for the allocation of 75 million hryvnias for local public roads.
The head of the infrastructure department of the Sumy Regional State Administration Volodymyr Dudchenko, for his part, said that with a limited number of resources and a large number of roads that need repairs, it would be more appropriate to focus serious funds on some of the most important objects, and as for the remaining funds, give priority to minor repairs in order to ensure a high traffic performance.
The expert of BRDO’s (Better Regulation Delivery Office) Infrastructure Sector Vladyslav Prytomanov said that the task of state regulation in the market was to establish mandatory minimum requirements for contractors and the quality of their services. But an efficient market is possible only with fair and free competition. “Today, more than 40% of works are performed by top 5 companies, while the activity of each of them has been concentrated only in certain regions in recent year. Another 25% of works are performed by road services in the regions. Therefore, the Road Fund should be considered as an instrument for providing a competitive market between contractors as a source of funding, which is independent from customers. In combination with long-term planning of reconstruction and construction of both state and local roads, standardization of qualification requirements, tender procedures and elimination of obstacles for international contractors, Ukraine has every chance to get quality roads,” he commented.
Source: Economichna Pravda
How to reduce the number of raider attacks and why do we need the draft law No.9311?
Hybrid aggression and military actions against Ukraine is a time to come together and protect small and medium businesses, which are the backbone of economy. The country will have no money on ammunition and armor without the economy.
One of key issues for Ukrainian business is raider attacks. In Ukraine, there have been 1690 raider attacks since 2013, and 539 – over the past one and a half years.
It is reported by Opendatabot, which is a platform to work with open data on the basis of information provided by the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Of course, some entrepreneurs often try to make usual debt recoveries and contract enforcement cases looking like illegal takeovers and position themselves not as unscrupulous debtors, but as victims of the attack.
Fortunately, there is no commonly used definition of “raiding”, and therefore they tried to apply this term to completely different events.
However, even if we exclude cases of quasi-raiding, the statistical figures are still striking and require some response from the state.
So what to do and how it looks in our realities?
State registrars, who carry out registration activities on the basis of fabricated judicial decisions or contracts pretending they do not understand the forgery fact, perform most of dirty tasks in illegal takeovers.
Sometimes, after a series of “successful” registration activities, such a registrar can not be found at all.
The information listed in the register is crucial to identify real estate owners.
When there is a chain of property resales registered, such an owner (now the former one) faces the need to get his property title back from an “honest” owner and a number of resellers, who will also have to be involved in legal proceedings.
As a rule, we have the need for long-term litigation, enormous costs for legal services, lost profits and no confidence of the success as a result of all these costs.
The illegal property takeovers described above have been occurring for many years, but raider attacks have become easier and more primitive when the so called “authorized performers” were introduced at the legislative level.
Particular attention should be paid to state registrars of the branches of municipal enterprises, whose popularity and reputation forced entrepreneurs and ordinary owners of expensive real estate to hide their property in mortgages, constantly check their right in the register, block registration actions or simply not to register their right.
The Ministry of Justice, with the support of business associations, the BRDO and the Business Ombudsman Office drafted a law No.9311 under the unofficial name #RaidingStop-3 to change this situation.
One of the key provisions of the draft law provides for depriving municipal enterprises the right to perform registration activities.
State-owned enterprises will register only if there are documents with an electronic signature, which will make it impossible to forge them due to the reliable person’s identification system.
We understand that not all municipal and state-owned enterprises took part in raider attacks, but, according to our estimates, the risks generated by this system exceed the benefits of the outsourcing of registrar functions in MEs and SEs.
In addition, the provisions of this draft law provide owners of corporate rights and land plots with an opportunity to register their desire to enter into transactions on them only with a notarial certificate on a unilateral basis.
Such an option has become a compromise not to impose the notarial certificate burden on all without exception on the one hand, and on the other hand – to provide owners, who are ready to pay money for additional security, the opportunity to protect their rights.
In addition to anti-raider provisions, the draft law also contains the rule on the cancelation of the minimum fee for notarial procedures in the amount of at least 1% of the contact amount, which was introduced by the presidential decree dated 1998.
This restriction leads to a number of negative aspects.
First, some notaries charge 1% of their clients as allegedly a “state duty” in addition to the cost of their services. This is not true while being nothing but a deception of clients.
Secondly, there is a practice where notaries really charge of less than 1% for their services, simply by returning the excess by cash to their clients or to intermediaries (bank employee, realtor, etc.).
In such a way, the provision on the minimum fee still does not work, but creates the basis for illegal transactions in the notarial market.
We believe that notaries have to compete with each other honestly. This is the best way to provide the balance between the quality of services and their price.
We do not see any adequate grounds for administrative price regulation of notary’s services.
Of course, there are no perfect laws and this draft law is definitely not a panacea.
In addition, given its importance to business, registrars and notaries, as well as the extremely short period, during which it was developed, some of its provisions should be further discussed and possibly finalized.
However, in the process of discussions, it is important not to forget about its main point – counteracting illegal property takeovers, which is an important element of the business climate in Ukraine.
Therefore, in general, we support this draft law and hope for same position of people’s deputies.
Specialized associations together with the EBA and the Office of the National Investment Council called on deputies to adopt a draft law that will allow the green energy market to develop.
We will know already this Thursday whether the MPs will give a green light to the Ukrainian alternative energy or not. It is planned to put the draft law No.8449-d on amendments to some laws of Ukraine regarding the provision of competitive conditions for the electricity production from alternative energy sources to a vote in the first reading on that very day. This was announced by the Chairman of the Ukrainian Association of Renewable Energy and Head of the BRDO Energy sector Oleksiy Orzhel at a press conference in the UNIAN press center on December 17.
“The draft law No.8449-d is the draft law that has been finalized by using the compromise text of seven proposed draft laws, the approval of which has been awaited by all for more than six months,” Oleksiy Orzhel said. “So, we hope that its fate will be determined in the first reading this very Thursday. And we are here to emphasize the importance of its adoption.”
Specifically, the Head of the State Agency on Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving of Ukraine Serhiy Savchuk told about the necessity of the fastest changes in the legislation.
“We present our comprehensive and finalized draft law that will make energy more sustainable and affordable. And, if this law is adopted already this Thursday, this will enable Ukraine to start working towards auctions already in the first quarter of next year. Thus, in 2019, test demonstration auctions will be conducted to establish a model of working, and from 2020, all auctions will be conducted on Prozorro,” the Head of the State Agency on Energy Efficiency said.
He also stressed that the issue of preserving the country’s investment potential was important, as investors would not stay long in unpredictable markets. According to Savchuk, if the law is not voted, large financial institutions will not provide credits for construction of green energy facilities.
“We hope that this draft law will be voted, and we are here to publicly ask all factions to vote for this draft law, which is extremely important for the industry,” Serhiy Savchuk said.
The Co-Chairman of the EBA Fuel and Energy Committee Maksym Sysoyev added that the delay in adopting the law, first of all, created uncertainty for investors.
“We agree that it is necessary to introduce auctions very carefully. Therefore, we carefully approached these issues and focused on loyalty of the system to all market participants. For example, it takes into account the experience of introducing auctions in European countries, in particular, in France. At present, uncertainty lasts more than half a year, which creates problems for investors. They go to other countries because of this legal uncertainty,” Maksym Sysoyev summed up.
The EBA appeals to the Parliament regarding the fastest adoption of the draft law No.8449-d. Representatives of the Association noted that they were ready to join in its further finalization after the adoption in the first reading.
“We have seen the pressure coming from international banks that calculate the risks, do not participate in large projects and suspend funding,” the Head of the Ukrainian Wind Energy Association Andriy Konechenkov explained. “For us, the main thing is to preserve the investment climate. Our market is promising, but everyone is concerned about the legal framework.”
“The first step towards changes is the adoption of this law. The proposed date for introducing auctions is a necessary compromise, because we are late in implementing necessary changes, because these changes should have been made earlier. However, Ukraine should remain a country with predictable laws and regulations. I once again call on people’s deputies to support this draft law,” Oleksiy Orzhel concluded the conference.
As a result of the press conference, an application letter to the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Andriy Parubiy requesting to support the draft law No.8449-d in the first reading this Thursday.
Every year, 800 thousand individuals and legal entities register about 1 million state-owned and municipal land plots in Ukraine. At the same time, the laws were developed in such a way that it is almost impossible to register a land plot without violations, and the procedure is corrupt, cumbersome, non-transparent and long-lasting. In spite of the fact that the land reform process has lasted for 28 years in the country and the number of legislative gaps has slightly decreased, the land registration procedure has become much more complicated. The number of regulatory tools in this area has increased, and they are duplicating each other.
For example, you will need to contact up to 14 times with various central and local authorities, land surveyors, appraisers, notaries, ASC and others to register your land plot. Moreover, government agencies compete with each other to control the process of land development and allocation, and the government created 8 different databases to store the relevant information. All this means excessive time expenditure and provokes corruption while being a significant barrier to business.
The government, business, public and expert community representatives discussed the problems in this area during the Roundtable “Land development and allocation for new construction projects: problems and solutions” on December 11. The event was organized by the BRDO Office with the support of EU4Business/FORBIZ as part of the Public Dialogue #PRODialogue.
“There is a kind of “endless circle” in the land sector: the excessive number of rules leads to their violation, and bribes are used to avoid liability for violations. The land registration can take from 8.5 months to 3 years under the current procedure. And the damage to the state due to corruption crimes, which have been investigated in the land relations sector since 2015, exceeds 450 million UAH,” the head of BRDO Construction Sector Olena Shuliak said.
Indeed, the procedure is completely non-transparent, despite the existence of a public cadastral map and services to view information of the State Register of Property Rights to Real Estate. In fact, these electronic systems only partly reflect the land registration procedure and almost do not reflect its history of changes. The output data on state-owned and municipal lands, their functional purpose and registration status is non-transparent. As a result, investors do not understand how to find a land plot for ownership or use.
According to expert estimates, 3 million land plots developed (or 14% of their total number) are not included in the State Land Cadastre. At the same time, unscrupulous purchasers of land plots have the opportunity to cover up unlawful actions with land by sharing or integrating land plots or through multiple transfers between different individuals and legal entities. If this information was publicly available, such situations would not be possible. And all participants agreed on that.
BRDO experts conducted a systematic study of the market related to the land development and allocation for new construction projects and concluded that the following steps are needed to reduce corrupt practices in land relations:
* Reducing the number of regulatory tools from 21 to 14.
* Transforming procedures in electronic services to the fullest.
* Reducing the term for registration of building land plots to 4 months.
The event was attended by the chief of the StateGeoCadastre’s General Directorate in Kyiv Emiliya Yarotska, the head of the board of the PO “Center for Geospatial Data of Ukraine” Andriy Tarnapolskiy, the director of the Land Resources Department of the Kyiv City State Administration Petro Olenych, the director of Inger Grad Ltd. Ihor Raikov, the legal advisor to the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) Yevhen Berdnikov and the managing partner of Totum Law Firm Bohdan Yaskiv.
More information – at www.brdo.com.ua and https://regulation.gov.ua/dialogue
From now on, the regulation of prices and tariffs for the following services are cancelled:
* testing services for buses converted from other means of transport to confirm their compliance with safety requirements;
* the development of land surveying documents and the execution of land evaluation works as well as the registration of their results in electronic form (exchange file creation);
* the execution of land surveying works in case of free transfer of land plots to citizens of Ukraine in accordance with the legislation;
* services related to electronic digital signature services.
These innovations will reduce financial burdens for business. According to preliminary estimates, savings will amount to more than 6.5 million hryvnias.
“The cancellation of price regulation in these segments will allow to stop the simultaneous existence of state price regulation and free pricing. In addition, this decision will significantly reduce state expenditure on administering procedures, namely the implementation of control measures related to price regulation, by almost 18 million hryvnias,” the head of the BRDO’s Control and Supervision sector and one of the developers of approved amendments Volodymyr Holovatenko said.
According to him, such liberalization will generally help create competitive conditions in the relevant areas of economy and improve the investment climate. This initiative arose from a review of the regulation of issues in state price regulation conducted by experts of the Better Regulation Delivery Office and presented in the Green Paper “Analysis of State Price Regulation”.
This research allowed to apply a comprehensive and integrated approach in the further creation of an effective price stability system.
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the draft law No.8450 “On Information for Consumers on Food Products”. The BRDO Office supports its adoption and believes that providing accurate and clear information on food products to consumers is an important step in respecting their rights and protecting their interests.
The constant development of production technologies and the growth of a variety of food product choices in the stores make consumers careful and scrupulous about choosing goods on shelves.
On 6/12/2018, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Draft Law of Ukraine No.8450 “On Information for Consumers on Food Products”, aimed at ensuring an adequate level of consumer awareness, defining general standards for food labeling and unifying the rules to provide consumers with information, in the second and final readings.
In particular, the draft law No.8450 provides for:
* the mandatory provision of accurate, reliable and clear information to consumers;
* determining unified requirements for providing information about food products sold both in stores and remotely;
* the possibility of producers to use a “without GMO” marker subject to confirmation that there are no GMOs in food products in accordance with the current legislation;
* requirements for providing information on the use of vegetable oils and fats in food products with the mandatory indication of the list of plants they are derived from;
* the minimum size of the text for indicating the mandatory information on a food product on its package;
* establishing requirements for the list of ingredients of food products, including the use of flavors, nanomaterials and products causing allergies;
* determining information that is required to provide as well as additional mandatory information;
* the need to indicate information about the processing of food products, such as drying or freezing;
It will be prohibited:
* to use of the word “natural” in the name of dairy products, if milk components are replaced, or fats or non-diary proteins, or any stabilizers and preservatives are used;
* to mislead consumers by indicating characteristics of food products they do not have, including medical or medical purposes.
The introduction of new requirements for the labeling of food products will ensure the right of consumers to protect and obtain complete, and most importantly, reliable information on food products.
It should be noted that the draft law No.8450 was developed to bring the domestic legislation in line with the provisions of the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council (EU) No.1169/2011 of October 25, 2011, on the provision of food information to consumers.
You can find the text of the draft law here.
Hybrid aggression and military actions against Ukraine – it’s time to come together and protect small and medium businesses, which are an important pillar of the economy. The country will have no money on ammunition and armor without the economy.
A key issue for Ukrainian business and international investors is raider attacks. The wave of raider attacks has increased: more than 1,700 cases of illegal property takeover have been recorded since 2014, and there were more than 500 raider attacks in Kyiv and the region. The physical “commandeering” of someone else’s property is a thing of the past, and before this, there should be pseudo-legal legitimation, that is, a falsified legal justification of criminal activities.
A draft law No.9311 #RaidingStop developed by the Ministry of Justice together with the BRDO Office, ACC, EBA, SUP and the Business Ombudsman Office can improve the situation. Despite the fact that some provisions of the draft law need to be discussed, we generally support its adoption by the parliament.
In addition to anti-raider provisions, the draft law contains another important rule – the cancellation of fees for private notaries in the amount of at least 1% of the contact amount, which is the provision referring to the decree of the President of Ukraine dated 1998. Due to it, there are flagrant distortions of price realities, as was the case, for example, with the sale of the famous Kryvorizhstal company, when a notary received more than 200 million UAH for the contract execution.
We advise the people’s deputies to support the draft law No.9311 #RaidingStop.
In November, the Government approved a decision to open access to geological information and liberalize its circulation. This allowed to introduce online auctions for the sale of special subsoil use permits. And today, the first lots permitting the subsoil use are available in the ProZorro.Sale system. The State Service of Geology and Subsoil of Ukraine (Derzhgeonadra) published the first 10 lots, which will subsequently be sold on transparent auctions, in the ProZorro.Sale system.
The experts of the Better Regulation Delivery Office have been studying the subsoil use market for the second year running and have conducted a systematic analysis of market regulation, which shows that one in four of 83 regulatory acts in this area have signs of being illegal and/or irrelevant. One-third of regulatory instruments provoke high corruption risks, and the sector operates under non-transparent and discriminatory conditions for the allocation of subsoil use rights.
According to the pilot project’s terms, the exposition of lots takes 90 days, which will allow potential buyers to prepare carefully for auctions. There are no restrictions on the auction participants, but they should be legal entities with Ukrainian registration. And to prevent so-called “dormant” licenses, a tender winner will have an obligation to perform a mandatory minimum list of works, otherwise his license will be revoked.
“Through the joint efforts of a number of market participants, associations, BRDO, MEDT, the Ministry of Ecology and a number of agencies, we prove to the world step by step that Ukraine can become transparent and comfortable for businesses and investors. And not least due to the smart improvement of the effective regulation system,” the BRDO Energy sector head Oleksiy Orzhel commented.
We remind that earlier, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved the Resolution “On Implementation of an Experimental Project on the Introduction of Auctions for the Sale of Special Subsoil Use Permits through Electronic Auctions” (https://bit.ly/2AncUBx). According to the document, the auctions for the sale of special subsoil use permits are carried out solely in accordance with a Temporary Procedure approved in the above-mentioned resolution.
Pursuant to the resolution, on December 27, the Derzhgeonadra signed an agreement with the SE “PROZORRO.SALE” on the launch of a pilot project on open electronic auctions for the sale of subsoil use permits. The pilot project will last until September 1, and according to its results, the Derzhgeonadra will formulate proposals on the mandatory use of electronic auctions.
Thanks to open auctions on ProZorro.Sale, the state and local communities have already sold assets of nearly 12 billion UAH.