By 2018, about 1,800 different cryptocurrencies have been created in the world. 25 of them have been created by the companies of Ukrainian origin. Ukraine is among top-10 countries in the world by the number of cryptocurrency users, while the daily cryptocurrency trading volumes with hryvnias amounted to $1.9 million. At the same time, the legal status of cryptocurrencies and transactions with them is still unclear in Ukraine. There are no registered companies that carry out relevant activities on the market.
How should the state respond on the cryptocurrency market development? What aspects of the current legislation hinder the market development? What risks do the state and market participants see when using cryptocurrencies? Is it necessary to license the cryptocurrency creation services?
The state, business and market representatives will try to find answers during the Roundtable “Regulation of the cryptocurrency market in Ukraine” in Kyiv on May 24.
The event will be attended by:
Oleksandr Danchenko, Head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee for Informatization and Communications
Maksim Nefyodov, First Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine
Mykhaylo Chobanyan, Founder of the KUNA cryptocurrencies exchange
Mykhaylo Vidyakin, Director of the NBU Strategy and Reforms Department
Oleksiy Mushak, People’s Deputy of Ukraine
Artem Afyan, Managing Partner of Juscutum JSC
Yehor Aushev, Co-founder of Hacken
Vladyslav Radysh, Global government director of Bitfury
Oleksiy Honcharuk, BRDO Head
Oleksandr Kubrakov, IT Sector Head, BRDO
BRDO experts reviewed the regulatory framework of the market and presented the results in the Green Paper “Cryptocurrency market regulation” that will be discussed during the roundtable. Join the dialogue!
Location: Kiev, PeremohaSpace (Peremoha Avenue, 62)
Time: 10:00 – 12:00, May 24, 2018
Registration by link.
Media Accreditation at [email protected]
Details at https://regulation.gov.ua/ or by calling: 063 440 47 07.
Digital technologies are an essential part of modern education in the world, but in Ukraine, the market of electronic educational content is still poorly developed. The Concept for reforming general secondary education in Ukraine provides for the introduction of a modern educational environment, in particular the electronic one. During 2018, it is planned to create a national e-platform, develop the first e-textbooks*, distance learning courses for pupils and advanced training courses for teachers. However, numerous technical, regulatory and financial barriers slow down the process. In particular, this is the inefficient state control in the sector, the lack of proper Internet access and poor technological infrastructure of most schools.
For example, while the state budget for 2018 provides for 732 million UAH for paper textbooks, there are only 40.9 million UAH for the electronic ones. It is expected that the funds will be spent not only to develop e-textbooks, but also to purchase the necessary equipment (tablets, netbooks, etc.). According to the Institute of Educational Analytics, only 5.6 thousand, or 34%, out of 16 thousand institutions of secondary education in the country are equipped with more than 20 computers.
The government, business public and expert community representatives discussed the market issues during the Roundtable “New Quality of Education through Digital Technologies: Prospects for the E-Learning Market in Ukraine” on May 17. The event was organized by the BRDO Office with the support of EU4Business/FORBIZ as part of the Public Dialogue #PRODialogue.
“Reforming the education sector plays a key role in the development of the digital economy and society. According to the new Law “On Education”, the state should provide all schoolchildren and teachers with textbooks, including the electronic ones, free of charge. In this regard, there are two important aspects: firstly, modern digital content and its quality and secondly, the national e-platform, which should become a multifunctional and flexible for introducing e-learning. Modern technologies in schools will motivate children to study and develop practical skills and competencies,” the Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Lilia Hrynevych said.
According to the BRDO, the current volume of the market of electronic educational content is small and amounts to only 14.1 million UAH. Notice that only 176 thousand of 3.9 million schoolchildren use electronic educational services. Given the low purchasing power of the population, the government order and a model of its purchasing by the state may promote the development of the market of digital educational content similar to the traditional markets of educational materials.
“The market requires a clear state policy along with a clear strategy on digital educational technologies – a road map that will allow businesses to plan activities and develop innovative products. Parallel steps include providing the necessary technical equipment in schools, making electronic educational materials available and encouraging teachers to use digital technologies. The world practice shows that countries with advanced educational systems such as inland, Switzerland, Singapore, Korea and Uruguay keep ahead of other countries in terms of economic development,” the BRDO’s IT Sector Head Oleksandr Kubrakov said.
The full implementation of e-learning is also hindered by regulatory requirements outside the educational sphere. In particular, sanitary rules and standards approved by the Ministry of Health limit the number of lessons with the use of technical training equipment to 4 lessons per week for elementary school students and to 6 lessons for senior pupils – that is, less than one lesson per day. In addition, they discuss the inclusion of requirements of 4.5 square meters per student when working with computer equipment into sanitary standards. This means the need to provide schools with classrooms of more than 90 square meters and virtually eliminates the development of e-learning. The unresolved issue of requirements for a comprehensive information security system when using electronic content such as personal data of users and the state information system in general is also a barrier to the use of foreign resources or cloud technologies, which are important components of modern e-education.
There was no clear definition of e-textbooks before the adoption of the new Law “On Education”, but now they are considered as a key element of educational digital technologies in schools, as they should ensure providing pupils not only with knowledge but also with competences as well as make them interested in learning through maximum use of multimedia and interactive content.
BRDO experts together with specialists from the Ministry of Education and Science and the Institute of Educational Content Modernization have already developed a series of regulatory acts that will become the first step towards the introduction of digital education. In particular, it is the Regulation on electronic textbooks and the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine “On the National Electronic Platform”, which have already been publicly discussed and are currently in the approval stage.
The full implementation of e-textbooks requires developing the following:
The event was also attended by representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science, Halyna Lakusta, the Director of Educational Programs of the IT Ukraine Association, Svitlana Lytvynova, the Deputy Director of the Institute of Educational Content Modernization, Andriy Piskun, the Advisor to the Head of the State Agency for E-Governance, Ihor Kaplushenko, the managing partner of the Rozumnyky Publishing House, Yuriy Tabachyn, the co-founder of EdPro company, Ilya Filipov, the EdEra project manager, Serhiy Tkachenko, the head of Unicheck, and representatives of educational and public communities.
The Green Paper “E-learning” and the presentation are available at www.regulation.gov.ua.
*The Law “On Education” defines an electronic textbook (manual) as an electronic educational publication containing systematic teaching materials that corresponds to an educational program, contains digital objects of various formats and provides interactive communication. The Law also provides for the use of electronic versions of textbooks, multimedia educational resources, public educational, scientific and information resources on the Internet in educational processes.
Today, compliance with national standards is obligatory in Ukraine if they are referred to in laws and regulations, contracts and construction codes (DBN and GBN). In all other cases, the standards are voluntary for use.
The adoption of draft laws No.7123 and No.6577 in the proposed versions will lead to absolutely voluntary standards in construction, lack of appropriate control, poor quality of design documents and, consequently, decreasing in the level of safety of construction facilities.
BRDO experts together with the construction community have developed amendments to the draft laws No.7123 and No.6577 that propose a balanced approach to the application of standards in construction.
The application of standards should become obligatory if construction codes refer to national standards relating to calculations and design methods and processes for implementing construction projects. This approach is international practice and is aimed at guaranteeing the safety of construction facilities by the state.
We invite you to leave feedbacks and comments on the document within the next 2 weeks.
Today, compliance with national standards is obligatory in Ukraine if they are referred to in laws and regulations, contracts and construction codes (DBN and GBN). In all other cases, the standards are voluntary for use.
The adoption of draft laws No.7123 and No.6577 in the proposed versions will lead to absolutely voluntary standards in construction, lack of appropriate control, poor quality of design documents and, consequently, decreasing in the level of safety of construction facilities.
BRDO experts together with the construction community have developed amendments to the draft laws No.7123 and No.6577 that propose a balanced approach to the application of standards in construction.
The application of standards should become obligatory if construction codes refer to national standards relating to calculations and design methods and processes for implementing construction projects. This approach is international practice and is aimed at guaranteeing the safety of construction facilities by the state.
We invite you to leave feedbacks and comments on the document within the next 2 weeks.
On May 10, the Cabinet of Ministers approved a number of important decisions for simplifying the business environment developed by the MEDT together with the BRDO Office as part of “deregulation day”.
One of the main decisions that were approved is aimed at the implementation of a risk-based approach in the activity of inspection bodies. For example, the approval of methodologies for developing risk assessment criteria and unified forms of inspection acts will allow to really assess the risk level of economic entities and introduce transparent rules to control the business.
“This is an important practical step in reforming the supervisory and control system. A risk-based approach in the activity of inspection bodies allows to focus on the prevention of violations instead of the punishment, as it is done in the civilized world. The basis for this is the risk assessment,” the BRDO Head Oleksiy Honcharuk said.
In particular, the implementation of this approach will allow:
Another important decision is the approval of a Concept on the Reform of Self-Regulation in Ukraine. This document establishes a framework to implement a coherent state policy in this area and involve the representatives of professional organizations to the regulation of relevant markets.
Ministers also supported the implementation of a Development Strategy for Small and Medium Businesses by 2020, which will improve the access of SMEs to information and financial resources and reduce the regulatory burden on business.
In addition, the Government cancelled the mandatory use of seals in trade that have remained in force due to inconsistencies in certain resolutions. In particular, in the areas of repair of home appliances, retail trade in alcoholic beverages and trade in petroleum products. The decisions aimed at restarting the aviation engineering sector in Ukraine and updating of acts related to the construction sector were also approved.
You can obtain additional information and comments in a timely manner:
Tetyana Kovryga, +38 050 68-99-328, [email protected]
The Cabinet of Ministers approved a decision that will reduce the regulatory burden on businesses, increase the investment attractiveness of the country and help Ukraine to improve its position in the Doing Business rating, in which we currently rank 76th.
“DoingBusiness has long been a kind of KPI for governments in developing countries and for Ukraine as well. Our country has shown positive dynamics in this rating over the past 5 years. This year we planned to achieve significant progress and even rank among the TOP-50 through the adoption of the draft law No.8124 that was expected to make things easier for small and medium-sized businesses. However, the erkhovna Rada did not have time to consider it, so now we should keep the previously acquired positions. The resolution approved by the Government will allow Ukraine to hope for getting +4 positions in the rating and can help us rank among the TOP-10 in terms of the “construction” component,” the BRDO Head Oleksiy Honcharuk said.
The resolution developed by the BRDO and the Ministry of Economy provides for:
You can obtain additional information and comments in a timely manner:
Tetyana Kovryga, +38 050 68-99-328, [email protected]
The Cabinet of Ministers approved a decision that will reduce the regulatory burden on businesses, increase the investment attractiveness of the country and help Ukraine to improve its position in the Doing Business rating, in which we currently rank 76th.
“DoingBusiness has long been a kind of KPI for governments in developing countries and for Ukraine as well. Our country has shown positive dynamics in this rating over the past 5 years. This year we planned to achieve significant progress and even rank among the TOP-50 through the adoption of the draft law No.8124 that was expected to make things easier for small and medium-sized businesses. However, the erkhovna Rada did not have time to consider it, so now we should keep the previously acquired positions. The resolution approved by the Government will allow Ukraine to hope for getting +4 positions in the rating and can help us rank among the TOP-10 in terms of the “construction” component,” the BRDO Head Oleksiy Honcharuk said.
The resolution developed by the BRDO and the Ministry of Economy provides for:
You can obtain additional information and comments in a timely manner:
Tetyana Kovryga, +38 050 68-99-328, [email protected]
The State Emergency Service of Ukraine has joined the Pilot Module for planning state supervision (control) activities to launch the IAS SSC (Integrated Automated System of State Supervision and Control). From now on, the information on inspections, first of all, on fire safety in public institutions, is available at https://inspections.gov.ua/
In particular, the portal provides access to the information on inspections of entertainment centers, health facilities, as well as schools and kindergartens, as part of a large-scale campaign launched by the SES in 2018.
“As of today, the SES detected more than 15,000 violations, more than 5,000 of which have not been eliminated for a long time. 1,319 facilities, including 937 pre-school and school facilities, 56 hospitals providing in-patient treatment, 326 shopping and entertainment centers and leisure facilities, have been already inspected. Just in Kyiv, violations were detected at “Magellan” and “Dream Town” shopping centers. It is proposed to close the “Altairovsky” shopping center in Odesa, the “Nikos” shopping center and the “Kolibris” supermarket in the Rivne region. The citizen’s safety should have top priority. From now on, our activity will become even more public, and every Ukrainian citizen will be able to visit the IAS website and see the results of inspections of public establishments in their city,” the Head of the SES of Ukraine Mykola Chechotkin said.
In turn, Oleksiy Honcharuk, Head of the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO), said that the fact that the SES joined the IAS indicated a change in approaches used by government bodies.
“The state is changing. And we can see these changes. Government agencies becomes more transparent. Today 18 state supervisory bodies are working on the IAS Pilot module; information on more than 108 thousand scheduled inspections, more than 2,000 of which already have the results, and on more than 3,000 unscheduled inspections for 2018 are collected there. And we are glad that the SES has also joined this process,” the BRDO Head said.
As of today, the SES has already published the results of 45 scheduled and 50 unscheduled inspections.
For information:
The pilot module for planning state supervision (control) measures to launch the IAS SSC was developed by the State Regulatory Service of Ukraine together with the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine and with the support of the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO) in 2017. The functionality of the IAS Pilot module is constantly improved: initially, it was used only to help plan state supervision (control) measures for 2018, and today it even allows to publish and collect the results of state supervision (control) measures.
delo.ua
A year and a half ago, Ukraine took the first step towards a complete reorganization of the system of business inspections – the relative regulatory framework was adopted. 2018, they finally started to implement the changes. The BRDO Head explained what business owners should expect from inspections in 2019.
A year and a half ago – in November 2016 – the Verkhovna Rada adopted a law on the liberalization of state supervision. The document, in particular, ordered to launch a single online system of inspections that would contain information on legal entities and individual entrepreneurs who are subject to inspections, annual audit plans and reports on their implementation in Ukraine. The State Regulatory Service is responsible for this task. The Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO) funded by the European Union as part of the EU4Business initiative developed a pilot module of the online inspection system together with the State Regulatory Service. Delo.UA interviewed the BRDO Office Head Aleksey Goncharuk who explained how things worked with this reform in general and the online system of inspections in particular.
Can entrepreneurs know for sure when officials will visit them with inspections?
In Ukraine, there is a moratorium, which prohibits government agencies to visit businesses with scheduled inspections. But the Cabinet of Ministers determined a list of agencies-exceptions to the rule, which can carry out scheduled inspections in spite of the moratorium. In particular, this list includes the State Fiscal Service, the State Architectural Inspectorate, the State Labour Service, the State Service for Medicines, the State Service of Geology and Subsoil, the State Aviation Service, the State Environmental Inspectorate and partially the State Emergency Service.
Last year, a pilot module of an integrated system of business inspections (IAS) was launched. You can find there the inspection plans for 2018 from almost all government agencies. That is, the business can check whether it is exposed to a scheduled inspection of any government agency this year by using the online portal. The only inspections that businesses will not be able to find in the system at this point are tax audits. We are working on this.
In Ukraine, in addition to scheduled inspections, there are other control measures that businesses will not be able to find in the integrated system at this point.
Each and all government bodies can conduct unscheduled inspections. For example, some individual complained of violations at some enterprise. If the State Regulatory Service considers that this complaint is justified, the government agency should respond and carry out an inspection. The business can not find out about this inspection until it starts.
The situation with scheduled and unscheduled inspections remains more or less clear. All of them are at least coordinated within the relevant agency and documented.
However, there are all kinds of documentary audits, regular special inspections and various monitoring activities. And in this case, not everything goes smoothly. Some agencies pretend that they are not control bodies at all, or they assure that individual inspections are in fact not supervisory and control measures. For example, the Water Resources Agency says that they are not a control agency at all, they say, their functions were fully transferred to the State Environmental Inspectorate. This is not entirely true. After all, they continue to monitor and inspect water public services and pump stations. there are an endless number of such examples.
We believe that all the actions of government bodies to check the compliance with legal provisions are supervision and control measures. Therefore, information about all actions in relation to businesses should be in the single system of inspections. We try to cope with the hybrid control measures, identify them and make a list. Then we will prohibit them, if such inspections are illegal, or will specify requirements to keep them within the scope of the law.
Should there be sudden inspections, which entrepreneurs are not informed about in advance?
The first position: all questions of the state to businesses should be documented. When an official comes to the business, they should document this before an inspection in the form of intention and record its results when it is carried out.
All control measures should be as transparent as possible.
But there is a big nuance. Different risks should be managed in different ways.
There are risks, the management of which by using scheduled inspections is the same as catching the wind in a net. It is nonsense. There are risks, for example, unreported employment, which can be identified not by scheduled inspections, but only in other ways. By means of test purchases, surprise inspections, monitoring and analysis of some company’s performance indicators for a long period. All this is not related to scheduled inspections.
But it is crucially important that all control measures – both scheduled and unscheduled ones as well as other inspections – should be aimed at the idea of reducing a risk.
Not the idea of penalizing, punishing an entrepreneur, adding taxes or replenishing the budget, but reducing a specific risk.
For example, reducing the number of fires, the number of accidents, injuries in the workplace, etc.
What will be changed in inspections for businesses next year?
By the end of this year, we would like to bring matters in the inspections of key government agencies under control. We will focus on the work of 33 agencies. This is, in particular, the State Environmental Inspectorate, the State Labour Service, the State Service for Medicines, the State Service of Geology and Subsoil, the State Agency for Fisheries, the State Emergency Service and the State Service for Consumer Protection. 15 of these state agencies are already working in the integrated system of inspections. This means that their employees have the access to it, publish orders-directions for inspections and upload all information about the results of inspections. This year we want to ensure maximum publicity of the information on inspections of these 33 agencies. By the end of the year, we want to be able to tell the business: guys, every scheduled inspection conducted in 2018 is already available online.
Another task for this year is to bring matters in the list of regulatory bodies under control and understand their functions and what they control and why.
Recently, we asked the State Service on Food Safety and Consumers Protection to clarify all the areas of their control. According to our information, there are 14 areas. For example, this is veterinary and sanitary control, control over the protection of consumers’ rights, control over compliance with sanitary legislation, control in the area of plant quarantine and protection. But the State Service on Food Safety and Consumers Protection got stuck on this inquiry, since they do not have an exclusive list of what they control and why.
It would be normal that the scope of control should directly depend on the risks that these bodies are trying to prevent.
That is, everyone should understand why we keep this or that agency, what bad things do not happen due to the activity of this agency.
For example, some agency works to prevent dying from fires. This is a clear risk, which is managed by the agency, and a clear task. Each agency should have such tasks.
Now we are going to analyze the reports of 33 agencies on the inspections carried out last year. To be honest, these are poorly worked out documents at first glance. Something like “last year we planned 18 activities, implemented 18 of them, so the agency is 100% effective”.
We will analyze them and come up with a list of specific risks for each body and what determines their occurrence or non-occurrence by autumn.
In autumn, the agencies will plan the inspections for 2019. It is important for us that they do it better.
The agencies should answer two questions: “why do they conduct inspections?” and “who should be inspected first to prevent these risks?”
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Source: “Development Strategy” magazine, #7.
One of the problems raised by investors-real estate developers is the lack of open access to information on zoning of territories. Without this information, it is impossible to understand what and where to build. Now, in most cases, an investor’s representative should physically visit an authority or local government office and review the paper documents directly on the spot to obtain this information. In these circumstances, there are often some difficulties. For example, when it is impossible to copy graphic materials of urban planning documents because the entire package of materials is marked “Not for public use”. Manufacturers, commenting on this situation, say that it makes no sense to invest in the territory, if there are such misunderstandings and bureaucracy at the stage of obtaining the initial data.
Indeed, according to the results of research conducted by the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO) in 2017, it has been found out that only 24% of urban planning documents were published on the Internet, in print media and at stands in offices of local authorities. Only 8% of these documents are published on the Internet.
Last February, the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO) appealed to the Ministry of Regional Development with a proposal to create a single web resource, where it would be possible to quickly find any urban planning document available to the public if it is published on local government websites. The Ministry of Regional Development immediately responded to this proposal and provided a regulatory framework to implement this decision in a few months. Already in May 2017, the Cabinet of Ministers made the necessary amendments to the provisions on the urban planning cadastre and open data.
The next step was the assistance of the Embassy of the Netherlands, which provided technical support for the implementation of this solution as part of the MATRA program. Thanks to their help and the work of the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO), such a web resource has already been created and is currently tested in the Sumy region. Its prototype is available here – http://pmap.minregion.gov.ua/ (PMAP). After testing, officials of local architecture and urban development bodies will be provided with the access to this resource, so that they could add the information there and update systematically.
The BRDO project team is also working on developing instructions to publish urban planning documents online. It is important that local government bodies understand how to publish graphic and text materials of urban planning documentation on their websites in an appropriate manner, so it would be convenient for users. This year, such instructions will be developed for each type of urban planning documents.
At the same time, the web resource and instructions will not fully address the issues of publicity of urban planning documentation, if this idea is not supported by local communities. There should be active citizens who will draw the attention of local authorities to the problem of secrecy of urban planning documents and promote their publication on the Internet. In turn, each person will be able to inform the administration personnel about the publication of urban planning documents by using PMAP services, so they could take it into account on a single web resource.
It should be noted that open urban planning cadastres are the most convenient and useful way for users to publish the urban planning documentation. Currently, there are about 20 urban planning cadastres available in open access at the regional and local levels. For example, at the regional level, they are cadastres of Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Odesa, Zhytomyr and Sumy regions. At the local level, such systems were created in Bila Tserkva, Vinnytsia, Irpin, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Sumy and Odessa.
While cadastral systems are developed step by step at the regional level, there is still no urban planning cadastre at the state level. As a result, it is still difficult for regions to obtain information on the mapping of large state-owned infrastructure facilities.
During 3 months, the BRDO project team consulted with representatives of government authorities, regions, businesses and the public regarding the problems of creating and developing a state-level urban planning cadastre in Ukraine. As a result of the consultations, we created two groups of proposals, the implementation of which will allows to develop such a state-level urban planning cadastre in Ukraine.
The first group of proposals includes the following measures and activities required to create the state-level urban planning cadastre:
The second group of proposals is aimed at improving the efficiency and usefulness of both the state-level urban planning cadastre and other cadastral systems:
Each of these activities is rather complicated and requires a considerable amount of time. But as experts say, to the fact that these measures are not implemented, the state and communities spend billions of hryvnias on paper materials. In turn, electronic data and their open use through cadastral systems will allow to save time and money of our citizens.
Source: Ekonomichna Pravda
What should be done to prevent the next attempt to reform the electricity generation market from being unsuccessful.
A year ago, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the Law “On the Electricity Market”.
However, another attempt to create a civilized market and harmonize Ukrainian legislation with the European one is unlikely to succeed.
The biggest drawback of our market is the ultra-high concentration, when 92% of electricity is generated by the five largest producers.
In fact, it is a state monopoly – Ukrhydroenergo, Energoatom, Tsentrenergo and the DTEK that controls about 80% of thermal generation.
This state of things allows the main players to manipulate prices, since the electricity cost for end consumers depends not only on the tariffs of particular producers, but also on the structure of the “energy mix”.
For example, if pricing principles in the market are changed in accordance with the requirements of the new law, the electricity price for consumers with irregular consumption schedules – small and medium-sized businesses, household consumers – will be the same as the price of the “most expensive” generation in the stock market segment.
As a result, prices for such consumers will increase at least by 30%. A positive aspect of such a price fluctuation could be the renewal of fixed assets of producers, since generation capacities are 80% worn out.
For example, in the world, the prime cost of electricity production for new nuclear power plants is 117 dollars per MWh, 60-140 dollars per MWh for coal based power plants and about 75 dollars per MWh for gas ones taking into account capital expenditures.
However, it is unlikely that there will be new power plants in Ukraine in the next 10-15 years, because a payment back period for such investments is more than 20 years. At the same time, importers as full-fledged competitors to the domestic generation also can not enter the market until a number of administrative, economic and technical barriers are removed.
Firstly, it is necessary to unite the Ukrainian energy system with the networks of European countries, ENTSO-E, or at least to create conditions to import through the Burshtynsky Island – a conventional territory, where electricity networks of the Burshtynsky TPP along with the adjacent electricity network and own consumers within the Transcarpathian, Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv regions are located.
However, the success of such synchronization with the EU depends to a large extent on domestic electricity producers who are not interested in new competitors and can sabotage bringing their equipment into compliance with the ENTSO-E requirements.
Market players may also block making investments into new generation facilities by reducing their prices at the moment arises to underreport specified economic rates for such investments.
Especially – in case of establishing payments to “fix” old equipment for the existing players. These surcharges will be added not to their kWh/year supply tariffs, but to the transmission tariff creating the illusion of competitive electricity prices.
Given this, we should not expect a positive effect from the reform on the market. There are possibilities to reduce a severe impact on the economy from the rise in electricity prices, but they are politically unpopular and unlikely to be implemented.
Thus, the amount of subsidies to the population added to industrial tariffs for electricity in 2016 was $1.6 billion. If we remove this burden on businesses, electricity prices for non-residential consumers will increase by 10-12%, and for the population – almost twice. Neither the government nor the regulator will do this before the elections.
In addition, such a situation significantly reduces the investment attractiveness of Ukraine. One of its factors was the formula of “cheap labor plus a cheap energy resource”, which is now cancelled out by higher prices for electricity.
A number of consumers will take advantage of direct contracts with electricity producers. Most likely, it will be powerful industrial enterprises and electricity exporters, that is, those who can predict their load in the long run. All others will pay for consequences of the reform out of their pockets.
What is the way out? It is impossible to reform the electricity generation market just by implementing a European model. The domestic market has the special features that need to be taken into account.
In our realities, main prerequisites for the successful reform are to strengthen antimonopoly requirements for generation market participants, create opportunities for opening imports, and build a new generation and storage systems.
The competition will develop in the electricity market only if the ownership structure is changed. In Europe, there were precedents when vertically-integrated companies split according to the anti-monopoly legislation. In the domestic market, each NPP, TPP, HEP and PSPS could be stand-alone players.
Otherwise, in the context of limited state intervention, the sensitivity of the market to price fluctuations, schemes and abuses will increase significantly that will affect end consumers and discredit the European integration process.
The philosophy of energy consumption is changing faster than the state and large businesses are responding to. with every rise in prices, Ukrainian consumers will get closer to alternative generation, energy efficiency and “zero” consumption.
The future of the market lies with the promotion of energy self-sufficiency for the population and businesses. The government is now encouraging to install solar panels in private houses. They have a fixed “green” tariff and a guaranteed buyer – an oblenergo that purchases excess electricity.
This approach should be also applied to legal entities that install electricity generation facilities of up to 500 kW. All excess electricity – production minus consumption – should be bought at a “green” tariff without additional regulatory burdens such as licenses and individual tariffs.
Source: investgazeta.ua
A settlement’s general plan is a long-term strategic document, a kind of scenario for the long-term development of a village, township or city. The legislation allows local councils to change general plans not more than once every five years. As an exception, it is possible to initiate their early change through local state administrations or the Cabinet of Ministers. But does this meet the practical needs of cities? Not always.
Imagine that some company wants to launch an attractive construction project in the city, but its general plan approved a couple of years ago provides for a completely different functional purpose for the designated place. In such circumstances, the investor will receive a refusal and, they say, may come in three years, when they will have the right to update the general plan, or appeal to the RSA. Such difficulties discourage investors. Meanwhile, the community may lose a potential chance to take a small step in its development.
There may be another situation. Local authorities decide that the project is appropriate, but in the light of investment proposals, they will develop a detailed plan of the territory, which is a less important urban planning document specifying the general plan’s provisions instead of making changes to the general plan. After that,the investor will be allowed to start construction works. However, in this case, the detailed plan and the very construction contradict the legislation and discredit the value of the general plan for the settlement.
So how does the municipal administration decide what matters more: legality or progress?
While the cities around the world are actively developing, the moral dilemma of our imaginary settlement suggests that the “five-year plan” for updating general plans is too outdated. This is a rudiment of the Soviet past – it’s time to revise it.
Numerous studies of the urbanization processes prove that three quarters of the world’s population will live in cities in the near future. Modern progressive cities become larger, accumulate more and more money, increase the influence inside the country, and eventually, become full-fledged players of the world economy on an equal footing with other states.
Obviously, in such circumstances, the appropriate spatial planning plays a crucial role for the proper growth of cities. But it is not enough just to develop a general plan, it should be really flexible and dynamic, so that the spatial organization meets the new and emerging business and community needs. At this point it is important to ask about the possibility to establish earlier dates for updating general plans. After all, regular moratoria do not help dynamics.
Conservatives take up the position that a general plan as a strategic document should not be subject to frequent changes, since in this case, local authorities may deviate from the agreed concept, and the settlement will develop chaotically. But let’s consider how often we change our plans. Whether there is a business strategy or a shopping list in a supermarket – it is inevitable that any plans are adjusted and improved. And a city as a living organism should not be an exception.
Do not be afraid to reduce the regulation. The genera plan’s flexibility does not mean a total absence of authority. It is an opportunity to change the details, while still keeping the main vector of long-term development of the settlement. It works, for example, in such a metropolitan city like Berlin.
As part of the Participatory Spatial Planning project, BRDO experts collect the information on the relevance of the current urban planning documentation on the PMAP portal. According to them, 27% of all villages and townships do not have general plans at all, and only 3% of villages have developed new general plans over the last 5 years. Many villages just update the documentation developed in the 70th-80th by their decisions. Village council heads and chiefs explain the situation by the fact that their villages are becoming really deserted, and young people go to cities, and therefore there is no sense to develop new general plans.
When it is needed to build a new facility for the agro-industrial complex in such villages, there is a necessity to make changes to the planning documentation. But, frankly speaking, why to burden the villages with developing new general plans or changes to them for each particular investor? Especially as they are not frequent guests there. In fact, general plans, zoning plans and detailed territory plans have lost their strategic function for most villages, and it would be more appropriate to re-categorize them as documents, which are recommended to be developed. Now it makes sense to impose an obligation to develop the spatial documentation on the united territorial communities, at the level of which there are more chances to develop a strategy and development goals for UTCs.
However, this recipe doesn’t work well for villages and townships located near large cities. The matter is that there are other risks in large cities. If we remove the ban on changing general plans, there really may be a practice when urban planning documents will be changed for every particular construction project. This, in turn, will lead to urban densification and chaotic construction. In Kyiv, there have long been problems related to the construction of high-rise buildings in existing residential areas, green areas or near historic sites. Of course, local residents, historians and environmentalists feel indignant at this fact. Such cases even sometimes lead to mass protests and the destruction of construction sites.
Therefore, if the restriction of making changes to general plans is removed, some preventive measures should be provided, depending on the size or specificity of settlements. For example, this restriction can be preserved only for the settlements with more than 300-500 thousand of inhabitants or established only historical development areas.
There is the same situation but to a less extent in villages near large settlements. They also suffer from chaotic manor constructions, so the approval of general plans for them is still important to place public amenities, infrastructure and industry facilities and landfills. It makes sense to preserve the obligation to develop general plans for such villages and remove restrictions to change them. However, it is necessary to develop a simple and clear algorithm to determine a list of such rural-type settlements.
In any case, if we leave the problem the way it is, it will continue causing feelings of helplessness to communities. We all need to understand that today the world is changing much faster than before. Without changes in the mentality of the population and the surrounding space, Ukrainian cities and communities will not be able to develop as fast as their more successful European neighbors. And for this purpose, communities should have the right to independently change their spatial schemes and documentation.
The BRDO Head Oleksiy Honcharuk initiated this proposal at the meeting with the Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Hroysman and companies belonging to the Association “IT of Ukraine” to discuss the technology industry development in Ukraine.
” This is important, since now about 120 thousand people with an average salary of $1,700 work in the IT sector. Our goal is to simplify work with foreign citizens, because IT is a global market, therefore, Ukraine should demonstrate its openness. It should be comfortable for IT companies to work with colleagues from other countries. It will work for the Ukrainian economy, and taxes will go to the budget,” the BRDO Head Oleksiy Honcharuk said.
Now the BRDO’s IT and Telecom sector is working to facilitate the employment of foreigners who want to work for the Ukrainian economy, which involves the following steps:
The Prime Minister stressed that the growth of the IT industry by 20% is a positive signal for the competitiveness of Ukraine. There are a number of issues that need to be addressed jointly – deregulation, and training skilled personnel. Volodymyr Hroysman said that Ukraine needed to gain competitive advantages globally. We should grow 1.5 to 2 times more than other countries in the region. The Head of Government said that the economy needed investments. And the state should ensure standing rules.
The BRDO’s IT and Telecom sector has prepared a Green Paper dedicated to the software market. Together we eliminated the barrier – the possibility to register an IE by a foreigner without a residence address (without a “residence registration”).
Today the sector team is working on equally important challenges: in 2016, the National Bank restricted the rights of IEs to transfer currency from an IE account to their own accounts – this is a negative step for the industry, and now we together with the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade arrange a meeting with the NBU to remove this barrier.
The meeting was also attended by the of the Cabinet of Ministers Oleksandr Sayenko, the First Deputy Minister of Finance Oksana Markarova, the Head of the State Agency for E-Governance Oleksandr Ryzhenko. The event was organized by the Association “IT of Ukraine”.
Ukraine is one of the six largest honey producers in the world and provides up to 5% of world production each year. Bee-farming has a huge potential to increase exports and develop small and medium-sized businesses in rural areas. However, the high cost and non-transparent rules to enter the market make this industry moving into the shadow and result in a lack of adequate control.
The state, business and public representatives discussed the ways of resolving the market problems during the regional Round Table “Honey Production Market: From Traditions to World Export” in Rivne on April 20, 2018. The event was arranged by the BRDO Office with the support of EU4Business\FORBIZ as part of the Public Dialogue #PRODialogue.
According to BRDO, in Ukraine, 98% of honey production are concentrated in private households and only 2% are produced by registered business entities. However, one in almost every 100 Ukrainians are engaged in beekeeping, and this is about 400 thousand farmer beekeepers, who will significantly increase the entrepreneurial potential and promote regional development if they are officially registered.
In Ukraine, the regulatory framework of the honey market includes 44 acts. One fifth of them are outdated, and 3 regulatory acts are even illegal. The special law “On bee-farming” has a number of shortcomings and does not cover all regulatory aspects required for the comprehensive market development.
“Business owners has to appeal at least 26 times to the state authorities from the beginning of honey production to its sale in the domestic market or for export. Such a number of regulatory tools does not help businesses clearly understand the market rules and provokes numerous corruption risks. This is particularly the case with the procedure for using a veterinary and sanitary card of bee farms, which is the main document to access the market,” Andriy Zablotskyi, the Agriculture Sector Head at BRDO, said.
for example, the Law “On bee-farming” provides for the issuance of veterinary and sanitary cards, but the Law “On Veterinary Medicine” doesn’t provide for this step. Such a legislative inconsistency creates grounds for late business registration, inefficiency of doing business, a lack of honey traceability, which is critical to export activities.
Ukraine is among the top three global exporters of honey while coming third only to China and Argentina. Over the past seven years, export volumes have grown sevenfold, reaching almost 68,000 tons in 2017. More than 48 thousand tons of them were exports to the EU countries.
” Ukrainian honey is in great demand in the EU. In the context of cooperation with the EU, the quota for Ukraine has been increased, but it is taken up already during the first month of the year. At the same time, the price of Ukrainian products is much lower than the same products in other countries, because it exports largely raw materials. Harmonization of the Ukrainian legislation with the European directive “On honey” by approving the technical regulations will allow exporting finished products with greater added value,” the EU4Business/FORBIZ key expert Joshua Badach said.
Another problem for the market is the negative impact of the use of plant protection products (PPP) by agro-enterprises that leads to the death of bees and damages to bee-farming. The worldwide practice shows that principles of good neighborliness help agrarians and beekeepers achieve the best results: agro-enterprises do not use PPPs that negatively affect bees and accurately report on field cultivation, while pollinate their crops having higher yields.
BRDO experts estimated that the following measures would help address the honey market problems:
– Facilitating the bee farm registration.
– Establishing transparent rules for issuing veterinary and sanitary cards for bee farms.
– Strengthening control of the State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection over the honey production and trade.
– Strengthening control over the registration and use of plant protection products.
– Introducing legal mechanisms of good-neighborly relations between producers and beekeepers.
– Providing state support to honey producers.
The event was also attended by Mykola Moroz, the Director General of the Food Safety and Quality Directorate of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, Oleksandr Lozovytskyi, the Head of the Department for International Integration in Technical Regulations, Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, Andriy Bazhyn, the Vice-President of the Public Union “All-Ukrainian Public Association “Union of beekeepers of Ukraine”, Pavlo Hegb, the Council Member of the Public Association “Dniprovsky bee keeper”, Borys Kobal, the Director of the Department of Agricultural Complex of the Rivne RSA, director of the Department of Food Safety and Veterinary Medicine at the State Service for Food Safety, Vitaliy Samson, the Head of the SRS Sector in Rivne region and numerous business representatives.
Source: delo.ua.
In Ukraine, the medical system financing reform, which allows private doctors to apply for the state budget, started. It may happen that this fact will encourage physicians to open their practices.
Since the beginning of April, every Ukrainian can independently choose a primary care physician – a pediatrician, a therapist or a family doctor as part of launching the first stage of the medical reform implementation. Such doctors can work both in state (polyclinics, in-patient departments, first-aid and obstetric centers) and private institutions. It is planned to create private offices of family doctors as well.
Delo.UA wrote earlier that there is a recommended number of patients for each physician – 900 children for pediatricians, 1,800 – for therapists and 2,000 patients for family doctors.
The basic tariff is already known as well. In 2018, a doctor will receive 370 UAH for one patient (an able-bodied person aged 18-39) per year. Next are the coefficients. A child aged 0 to 5 years has a coefficient of 4. From 6 to 17 years – a coefficient of 2.2. From 40 to 64 years old – 1.2. And 2 for people aged 65+.
In order to make this new financial system working, doctors and patients should sign a declaration. The data will be entered to the eHealth system, on the basis of which a new body – the National Health Service of Ukraine (NHSU) – will calculate whom and how much to pay.
Patients themselves will make a choice of what kind of doctor to choose and in what institution (private or public) to go for help. It is more or less clear with state institutions – a declaration is signed with the doctors of polyclinics, which everybody has got used to visit. However, they will work in a new way, according to the above-described algorithm. But the question of who such private family doctors are, where they are, from where they should come and why is still open.
Private family doctors – who they are
Private family doctors are individual entrepreneurs or legal entities working under the KVED code “General medical practice” (86.21). The press service of the Ministry of Health explained: now private family doctors do not work with the state, and there is no specific license to provide primary health care. There is just a general medical practice license. Both large private clinics and individual doctors who want to start own practice can obtain it.
” From the middle of the year, signing the contracts with the NHSU will show us to what extent private institutions and physicians who are individual entrepreneurs adapt to the system. Representatives of private institutions declare that they are ready to enter the market aggressively – but we will see the results,” the Ministry of Health specified.
How to start a family doctor’s private practice?
You need to have the will power and perseverance to register this type of economic activity. This is evidenced by the experience of those who have already coped with this task. By the way, it is quite simple to register as an individual entrepreneur. It is more complicated to go through the procedures necessary to create appropriate conditions for the doctor’s activity.
Iryna Heraschenko, a private family doctor practicing in Kharkiv, shared her own experience related to opening a non-state-owned doctor’s office.
By the way, Iryna is a displaced person. She worked at Shyrokino. Prior to the military conflict, she agreed to participate in the pilot project on the introduction of family medicine, which began in 2012.she has graduated with the specialty of a therapist. Having attended courses at the Donetsk Medical University, she received a specialty family medicine. By 2015, she worked as a family doctor in Donetsk.
” At first, in the pilot project, patients reacted on family doctors with hostility and distrust. But everything has changed in the process. The state allocated funds, for which we got a new car, physiotherapy equipment, a cardiograph, a telecardiophone for telemedicine, by using of which it was possible to make a cardiogram directly at the patient’s home and send it to the clinic by phone,” the doctor said.
In 2015, when active military operations started, the doctor moved to Kharkiv. Being a high level certificate physician and having a great experience, Iryna thought that she would easily get a job in Kharkiv.
As it turned out – this was not the case. There are no vacancies of doctors in Kharkiv, even in the suburbs. Therefore, she decided to create a workplace by her own.
“She applied to the Information and Analytical Department at the Kharkiv Regional Health Department looking for a vacancy in a public hospital, and then asked how to open a private family doctor’s office. They provided all the information,” Iryna Gerashchenko said.
You should first register as an individual entrepreneur (IE). It takes just one day. In Kharkiv, in the Center for providing administrative services, this is done in a well organized manner. You just submit documents – your passport, code and application – and the next day, you will receive a certificate that you are an IE. Immediately after submitting documents to register as an IE, is necessary to apply to a tax office and register there. In the Iryna’s case, this is a simplified taxation system, the 2d group of taxpayers.
Then you need to rent a premise. If you firmly decided to do this – you need to think about it first of all. Because there is a number of requirements and recommendations to such a premise – it should be remote from other medical facilities and located conveniently for patients.
” My advantage – my office is located on the Kharkiv fringe, it is a quiet bedroom district. The nearest clinic is far away, it requires to change twice to get it. It doesn’t seem convenient for people. And there are high-rise buildings, many schools, kindergartens, and children. There was a premise for rent that I’ve got in one of these high-rise buildings,” the private doctor said.
The compliance of the selected premises with standards should be confirmed by the Department of the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection (previously the sanitary and epidemiological agency performed these functions). You also need to apply to them. Representatives of this department should make the necessary measurements: radiation, illumination level, water analysis. Iryna spent 2,300 UAH on these “services”. If everything is fine – they will give you the act.
Next, you need to get a certificate on the material and technical status of the family doctor’s office. The Ministry of Health has developed and approved equipment schedules, which specify the basic equipment necessary for such an office. These documents are freely accessible on the the website of the Ministry of Health.
“Then I sent a package of documents – an IE certificate, a lease agreement, a certificate on the office’s sanitary and epidemiological analysis, a material and technical status certificate – to the department of administrative services at the Ministry of Health (by courier). And within two weeks, I’ve found out that “a medical practice license in the field of general practice, family medicine was issued for my IE by the order of the Ministry of Health” on the MoH website,” Iryna summed up.
Our heroine made her way to opening a private medical office by her own. Instead, you can make life easier by using the Platform for Effective Regulation and learning here about all the necessary procedures and documents to open a doctor’s office. You will not need even to visit advisory centers of the Ministry of Health or state administration agencies. In this service, just select the section “For business”, then – “How to start a business”, find a case ” How to open a family doctor’s office” and respond to a small survey concerning your intentions and available resources to understand what else you need to register to start your own business.
BRDO experts defined the opening of a family doctor’s office as of the “middle complexity”. Depending on the premise availability, a contract on payment for utility services, taxation type, use of hired labor, a doctor will need to go through about 7 procedures, collect from 15 required documents and, as a result of registration, obtain about 9 documents.
How much does it cost to start a family doctor’s private practice?
In total, a doctor will need at least 26 thousand UAH to start a private practice.
“The basic equipment will cost at least 20 thousand UAH,” Iryna said and added that it was not difficult to buy it. You can buy something online, since there are various online stores selling medical equipment, something can be bought even through the online OLX platform. Searches and purchases took about a month and a half, along with repairs in the leased premise and registration with state bodies.
A set of medicines provided for in the list of material and technical equipment will cost another 1,000 hryvnias.
All official registration fees will amount to 5 thousand UAH. ” 26 thousand, this is the minimum amount required. But everything depends on the equipment, rent of premises and so on,” Iryna said.
Specific aspects of medical private practice
It is not enough just to register your business – you need to get it started. It is necessary for patients to know about you. What can you do for this?
Firstly, it is an eye-catching signboard, in the Iryna’s case, it is “Home Doctor”.
Further, she said, she distributed a lot of leaflets with information that there is the doctor’s office opened, its address and contacts. The leaflets were placed on information boards in the entrances of buildings and other special places. Another possible way is to advertise on OLX and other similar Internet platforms.
It also will be helpful to create your own website, because many people are looking for information on the Internet.
Prospects for private family doctors
The Ministry of Health emphasizes that now doctors workings as IEs are paying a UST (unified social tax) and have the same pension rights as all other workers in Ukraine. But the tax burden on employees working as IEs is much lower – this means that more funds are allocated for doctors, because the taxes are lower.
Iryna Heraschenko, already practicing as a private doctor, is thinking about whether it is necessary to sign medical care contracts with patients that will be financed at the expense of the state budget.
” Many people are wondering whether it is possible to sign such a medical care declaration provided for by the medical reform with me. On the one hand, it is very profitable for a private family doctor like me. If I hire even 500 people, instead of 2,000 as provided for public doctors, this money for their medical care will come to my account, to my office. I, as an IE, can decide myself what funds to spend on renting, on my salary, for analyzes, medicines, etc ,” she explained.
But at the same time, the doctor has doubts whether these funds will really come with patients.
“I will take responsibilities to people, but it is not clear how everything will turn out. Therefore I doubt it. As a private entrepreneur, I take money from people for my services now. But if I sign a declaration or a contract, I won’t take money from people, these funds should be transferred by the state. But the questions is whether the state will do it or not,” the doctor specified.
However, if the system works as it is foreseen by the reform, there should be no payment problems.