Parliament relaxes rules on importing defense products to Ukraine
The law stipulates that knots, aggregates and spare parts supplied for use in the production of defense items, the end consumers of which are state defense order customers, will not be subject to imports duty.
This does not apply to similar goods that originated from a country that was declared an occupant country under Ukrainian law and/or a state-aggressor against Ukraine, or if they are imported from the territory of the occupant country (aggressor).
http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/economic/262362.html?utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=twitterfeed
Deregulation & Privatization Top Priorities For Ukraine’s Economy Minister
Ukraine’s Parliament moves to break up Naftogaz
https://www.kyivpost.com/content/business/ukraines-parliament-moves-to-break-up-naftogaz-385913.html
Avakov dismisses heads of State Emergency Services in all regions
http://www.unian.info/politics/1059821-avakov-dismisses-heads-of-state-emergency-services-in-all-regions.html
Senior Ukrainian official arrested for embezzlement as government ups anti-corruption campaign
http://uatoday.tv/news/senior-ukrainian-official-arrested-on-corruption-charges-during-cabinet-of-ministers-meeting-417511.html
Poroshenko promises to end monopolies in power industry, other monopolies in Ukraine
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko has said that order needs to be restored and competition brought back into the energy sector and stressed the importance of de-monopolization, diversification and de-oligarchization of the energy market as a precondition to ensure its security.
“The policy of de-monopolization and de-oligarchization is fully consistent with the national security interests, and I am sure that neither I, as president, nor the government, nor the Verkhovna Rada will give up this course, no matter whoever and whatever is trying to blackmail Ukraine and me as president – by the so-called miners’ battalions, two-thirds of whom were “titushki” (hired thugs) or so-called private armies or information sabotage, which they are currently trying to launch against me and against Ukraine,” the president said at a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council on Wednesday.
http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/264215.html?utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=twitterfeed
SBU freezes 26 accounts of ex-high ranking officials in Ukraine – Nalyvaichenko
http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/260725.html?utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=twitterfeed
Yatsenyuk reiterates commitment to reforms in year-end interview
The state aparatus was cut by 25,000 workers in 2014 and will be cut by 50,000 in 2015, Yatsenyuk said. Some 26 regulatory bodies were liquidated out of 52 that existed before, he said and the number of taxes cut from 22 to 11.
“These reforms are not effective for the government I lead for one reason – the (results) require time. Next government and next prime minister will win from these reforms,” he said. “After my tenure the chances to keep my political ranking (high) are very, very low. But this is my choice and I realize the consequences.”
Poroshenko: Planned decentralization in Ukraine has nothing to do with federalization
“I want to warn right away that there are a number of issues to which decentralization won’t apply in any way and where the center’s role would even be increased rather than reduced. This concerns defense. We won’t have any delegation of the right to defend the country to anyone, and we won’t have any local battalions, divisions, local militia, and other nonsense. This also concerns national security, foreign policy, and the fight against corruption,” he said.
“As concerns decentralization, there is an absolute consensus that we need to delegate significant powers to territorial communities. The decentralization has already been started through amendments to the Budget Code, as we transfer money, its sources, and responsibility to territorial communities,” he said.
Poroshenko stressed that decentralization will be conducted using relevant international experience. “International experts and advisers are working here. Poland’s model has been taken as a basis,” he added.
The president said he had submitted a bill amending the constitution to the Verkhovna Rada, which should be elaborated on and presented for passage in the second reading.
Poroshenko said he hoped that new people with new powers, “both budget, and those resulting from the relevant constitutional amendments,” will be elected in next local elections. He said the amendments will concern not only budget but also tax regulations.
http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/economic/249960.html
Website for tracking reforms: http://reforms.in.ua/index.php?pageid=Vac1
“Ukraine needs structure of a federal state”
The head of Ukraine’s Tax Inspection Service has been detained for taking a bribe (Ukr).
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2015/03/10/7061062/?attempt=1
Some bureaucratic reforms, including cutting red tape for grain exporters:
http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/reform-watch-13-383276.html
Lustration procedure launched at Ukrainian Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food
Read more on UNIAN: http://www.unian.info/society/1059889-lustration-procedure-launched-at-ukrainian-ministry-of-agrarian-policy-and-food.html
This is the type of mid-level raid that makes me this it’s a genuine fight against corruption, and not a turf battle.
CONTINUING THE PUBLIC PARADE BRIBETAKERS..
Kryvyi Rih.
Today, the detained head of the Dzerzhinsk District Council of Kryvyi Rih Stepaniuc Sergey Dmitrievich in article 208 of CPC (red-handed at the scene of the crime), Church. 368. h. 3. PDA (from 5 to 10 years).
The detainee is suspected of abuse of official position and taking bribes in the 60000 USD for issuing permission for placing kiosks.
For the indication of further money was transferred to the bank account of his wife’s brother. This does not help the attacker to escape punishment.
Stepaniuc was detained in the Office, when you pass the licensing documents. Personal protection officer tried to resist the police investigators was localized. Directly at the Office discovered an arsenal of weapons.
The question is not about a small trick-question in curbing the current corrupt system in this case in the area of Krivoy Rog. This is important. Regular rayon kinglet-“host area stopped.
Who’s next, bribe-takers comrades?
Economist article about Ukraine’s difficult situation includes this:
The government is acting. It has introduced an electronic VAT system, for instance, which will make evasion more difficult.
Payroll-tax breaks should also help to bring more firms out of the shadows.
The State Fiscal Service reported in April that it had received about 3,000 applications to take advantage of a tax amnesty—whereby people make an honest tax declaration in exchange for a waiver from penalties—though that boosted revenues by just $12m.
the government has cut the cost of Ukraine’s pension system from 18% to 14% of GDP, mainly by changing the way that payouts rise and removing perks enjoyed by the old Soviet elite. (The biggest reform to pensions, raising the retirement age, has been kicked into the long grass.)
Spending on education and health care has seen big drops, and a fifth of civil servants are being fired.
In the first quarter of this year, state spending in real terms was 17% lower than the year before, leading to a budget surplus (see chart 2).
Reform has begun . . . including making land-registry records available online, and judges are being more closely scrutinised.
Following Georgia model, Ukraine terminating the entire traffic police department.
– the central and local governments had a fiscal surplus in the first quarter of 2015. The government also tripled the price of gas, putting it closer to market levels, thus closing a source of major fiscal problems.
– The government passed and implemented a number of crucial laws to change the institutional environment of the economy. It opened the energy market to more competition, enhanced protection for minority shareholders, cut red tape and regulation, and increased access to public records. Index for Monitoring Reforms, a survey-based index that tracks regulatory changes and is calculated bimonthly based on an expert survey, suggests that the government is serious about reform (see Figure 1).
Poroshenko’s State of the Union:
Invoking Thatcherism and Reaganomics, he expressed dissatisfaction with his government’s efforts to ease tax and regulatory burdens — it has cut the number of business activities requiring licences to 26 from 56 and scrapped the obligatory certification of a number of products. “No one has felt yet that things are substantially easier and we need specific results like oxygen,” he said.
He stressed the need for broad privatization, saying state companies’ management “has already been privatized along with their revenue streams.” Himself a billionaire (or as close to one as any Ukrainian can be under the circumstances), he said oligarchs would no longer get rich off Ukraine’s once-huge fuel subsidies, which have already been sharply reduced.
Poroshenko complained that his government’s anti-corruption campaign had so far succeeded mainly in making bribery more expensive by increasing the risk to bureaucrats. “The image of the state is formed in citizens’ eyes by the tax inspector, the customs man, the cop,” he said. “While they’re on the take, people won’t believe the sincerity of our anti-corruption intentions.” He said further reforms were already under way in the police force and prosecution service, led by people who had achieved results in Georgia after its 2003 Rose revolution.
To be sure, Ukraine’s economic predicament leaves it little choice but to embrace radical reform. Its gross domestic product declined 17.6 percent in the first quarter, compared with a drop of 1.9 percent in Russia. As Herman Gref, chief executive of Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, joked in a recent interview, “reforms begin when money runs out, so we’ll wait for that to happen.”
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-04/poroshenko-makes-putin-look-like-a-wimp
