November 8, 2016

New laws adopted to simplify the business environment in Ukraine

On November 3, 2016, the Ukrainian parliament adopted a series of progressive laws to simplify the business environment. The new laws will, according to the Reanimation Package of Reforms, reduce the opportunity for abuse by supervisory authorities when controlling economic activity, promote the practice of pre-trial dispute resolution procedures, and remove some of the barriers for service export.

The laws was prepared jointly by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, Members of the Parliament, business representatives, and experts. The laws have been developed to simplify the business environment and to promote partnerships between the government and the entrepreneurs.

The economic package comprised legislation on mediation (No.3665), on amendments to some legislative acts concerning the removal of administrative barriers to exports of services (No.4496), on amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On fundamentals of state supervision (control) of economic activity” regarding liberalization of public supervision (No.2418a), on amendments to some legislative acts of Ukraine concerning the improvement of legislation in the field of state supervision (control) (No.2531a) and the law about the peculiarities of state supervision (control) of economic activity (No.3153).

The legislative changes endorsed by the parliament is a significant step towards improving the business environment and limiting the government’s influence on the economy, believes the expert of the Reanimation Package of Reforms, Dmytro Romanovych.

“The package of laws on the reform of supervision (control) is one of the necessary preconditions to turn the inspection agencies from punitive into business-friendly ones. Introduction of the presumption of innocence of businesses, development of an integrated public database of checks, adoption of clear rules for applying the risk criteria when planning the checks, and other innovations will contribute to this if properly implemented. We would like to emphasize that by limiting the number and the duration of inspections, we will save businesses up to 0.5 billion UAH annually, without considering fines and bribes which they were forced to pay,” said Romanovych.

In addition, according to some estimates, simplification of services export control will provide an additional inflow of foreign currency amounting to 300 million USD into the country, which used to settle down in foreign payment systems. As for the law on mediation, its adoption in the first reading can be considered the first step towards a full-fledged introduction of the institute of mediation, which should significantly speed up and reduce the cost of dispute resolution at the pre-trial stage.

The experts of the Reanimation Package of Reforms consider the adopted package of laws revolutionary for the Ukrainian society.

“Regulatory innovations, endorsed by the Parliament on November 3, is one of the few cases where all the three groups of stakeholders – the public, the business community, and the government – will benefit as a result of the legislative changes. This package of laws will allow to prevent abuse of the supervisory authorities in the process of supervision in the field of economic activity, promote the practice of pre-trial dispute resolution procedures (with relation to economic cases, in particular), and minimize the administrative barriers for the Ukrainian freelancers by simplifying the procedures for services export. As a result, the relevant laws increase the level of trust between the state and the entrepreneurs and shape the conditions for a substantial improvement of Ukraine’s position in the World Bank Doing Business ranking. The RPR experts took active part in the development of this package of laws and are grateful to all those who helped to have it approved. We hope for an equally fruitful dialogue with the authorities in the course of implementation of the adopted legislation and are ready to fully contribute to this,” said the RPR advocacy manager Olena Prokopenko.

The public expects the Verkhovna Rada to adopt the law on mediation in the second reading as soon as possible, and the President – to promptly sign four other deregulatory laws adopted as a whole on November 3.

 

The article is written by Reanimation Package of Reforms with some adaption made by NUCC.

 

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