Newly designed online system holds first auctions to sell the assets of insolvent banks and pay back the money to bank depositors. Officials, experts and developers explain the changes to come.
First auctions to dispose of the assets of insolvent banks with the use of ProZorro.Sales (in Ukrainian: ProZorro.Prodazhi) system were held on November 17. Seven more auctions are taking place today. Highest lot price is UAH 4 million. The course of the auction can be followed online through the online trading platform zakupki.prom.ua, reported Anna Teselko, head of the project “Public auctions”. “It is a pilot project. Main thing now is to make sure that the platform is reliable and represents a competent way to address the issue. Figures of the first few months of the project are also crucial. As soon as the system proves its competence, all Deposit Guarantee Fund’s bidding will be going through it,” said Maksym Nefyodov, first deputy minister of economic development and trade of Ukraine.
“We perceive combat against corruption as ‘catching and jailing’. However, corruption disappears when new rules are set that do not let it appear. Corruption grows in closed environments,” said Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, executive director of Transparency International Ukraine. He said Ukraine now has to pay back UAH 78 billion to banks depositors. Over 2016 only UAH 8 billion was paid back through auction sales, rest is being financed through the state budget. “Inefficient system makes it problematic. It needs to be made accessible and transparent, so that business trusts it,” he explained.
Yuliya Bereshchenko, director of department for consolidated sales and assets management of the Fund for Deposit Guarantee to Individuals said that the Fund’s online platforms that had been selling assets before ProZorro.Sales was launched, were added to the system. “We are waiting for more market actors to join the system. We hope that we will be able to increase the revenue and return the money to depositors. Our aim is to widen the spectrum of buyers, make it more competitive, eliminate potential illicit accords between buyers with platforms, make the auction process perfect so that everyone is able to bid. Everything needs to be done so that the money is paid back to the bank depositors,” Bereshchenko said.
Oleksiy Sobolev, head of ProZorro.Sales project office said that the system was completed within four-five months. “We have passed through all the important stages. Next stage is to adjust the system so that it may be used to sell all Fund’s assets. The system’s use needs to become mandatory,” he emphasized.