ProZorro.Sale launches electronic bidding to sell non-core assets of state property. They will offer for sale state and municipal property, such as unprocessed timber, scrap metals. Ukrgazvydobuvannia and UkrEnergo have already joined the project. “In 2017, ProZorro.Sale plans to sell used assets of state enterprises, non-core assets, timber. We will make transparent auctions for the lease of state property and small privatization. Our plan is to sell for UAH 7 billion this year,” said Oleksii Soboliev, director of “ProZorro.Sale” Project Office, at a briefing held at Ukraine Crisis Media Center.
People do not know much of public sales. Few people know what the state sells and at what price, although they manage billions of hryvnias. Under a pilot project on the sale of Deposit Guarantee Fund’s assets, UAH 400 million have been earned. “The system we use is similar to ProZorro.Procurement. There is a central database where transaction is done and every citizen can see both the tender and statistics. There are 28 electronic platforms that protect against asymmetric information,” noted Maksym Nefiodov, Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine.
This year UkrEnergo plans to offer lots for UAH 70 million in the expected value. “It is mostly scrap. But we look forward to the enactment of the law on electricity market, which will exclude UkrEnergo from the list of companies, whose property cannot be involved in any transactions. This will allow us to use non-core assets. A huge amount of property, which de facto is not used in production activity, will also be available for sale. The next year annual sales will involve UAH 150-200 million,” said Vsevolod Kovalchuk, the Head of Ukrenergo. “The first lots that we offer are scrap metals. We plan to sell thousand tons per year. There is oil, used oil and batteries we can put on sale without engaging an independent assessor. When it starts working, we plan to sell tangible assets for half a billion hryvnias per a year,” added Andrii Khomenko, Advisor to the Head of Ukrgazvydobuvannya.
The possibility of state-owned enterprises to sell part of assets through ProZorro.Procurement is another success in the fight against corruption. “Those areas where there were a lot of claims about corruption, those companies that were exempt from corruption schemes today show very good results of efficient management. Profits increase several times; state-owned enterprises begin to make money where previously they had losses, and this is a priority for the budget. We ask for money, borrow from the IMF under different conditions but actually we have the money in our state,” believes Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, executive director of Transparency International Ukraine.
