Experts: Ukraine may gain 10-13 positions in Doing Business rating next year

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Legislative changes potentially will improve Ukraine’s position in the rating yet there are still a number of issues to address for the state jointly in with the World Bank.

Kyiv, May 20, 2016. Ukraine may go up 10-13 places in Doing Business rating next year. Nevertheless, it will not hit top-50. This became possible as a result of legislative amendments as of end of May 2016, said Oleksiy Honcharuk, Head of the Office of effective regulation (BRDO) and Dmytro Romanovych, project manager for deregulation at the National Council of Reforms at a press briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center.

Improved protection of minority shareholders and fiscal reform – improvement of the situation with unified social tax payment – are among the positive changes, said Honcharuk. In the next four months Ukrainian specialists will be working jointly with the World Bank experts, assessing implemented deregulation reforms. During this period Ukraine has a chance to move up the list in the rating due to implementation of approved legislation.

At the same time, over 20 draft bills were drawn as a part of “road map” for implementation of the best deregulation practices, but the majority has not been reviewed yet. “There are 13 bills registered in the parliament at present and around 10 more are in the process of registration or coordination,” said Romanovych. He added that these draft bills either have been waiting to be put on agenda for a long time or were not dealt with due to the lack of time. Partially it happened due to political crisis and rebooting the government, and partially due to lack of political will.

“I would like to emphasize once more that the rating is not a goal in itself. It is important, but the change resulting from these draft bills are even more important,” stated Romanovych. He said he hoped they would manage to organize a meeting of the National Council of Reforms dedicated to deregulation. “Probably we will manage to agree on joint cooperation between all the branches of power in this format and get things moving,” elaborated Romanovych.

Honcharuk informed that the Office of effective regulation jointly with partner non-governmental organization is to start an awareness raising campaign in regions tomorrow. “We are convinced that by communicating the need of introducing the best regulatory practices in Ukraine we will jointly have better chance to receive good standing in international ratings, and in reality improve and simplify life for business in Ukraine,” said Honcharuk. The first round table discussion with participation of experts, local authorities and business will take place in Sumy and will be dedicated to grid connection. Later similar events will be organized in different regions of Ukraine.

Moreover, the Office of effective regulation launches a web-page offering a simple way to learn how one or another suggested innovation will change the life of business in Ukraine and influence Ukraine’s position in Doing Business rating. “We intend to add all the initiatives registered in the parliament to the page and forecast their influence on the rating position in order to avoid needless manipulations,” added the Head of the Office of effective regulation.