Olexandr Saienko: European Union praises progress made in the area of public administration reform and leverage investment in the sector of state enterprises

The European Union  highly assessed the implementation of the Public Administration Reform (PAR) , including the reform of state property management and  leverage investment in the sector of state owned enterprises (SOEs) , the Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine Olexandr Saienko stressed, commenting on the Association Implementation Report on Ukraine.

In this report, the EU representatives emphasized the  positive dynamics of financial indicators of SOEs in the last reporting period and cited statistics according to which profits of the top-100 State owned enterprises have increased by  38% in 2017.

Olexandr Saienko added that the profit achieved last year  amounted to UAH 44.4 billion, which is 2.2 times more than the figure in 2015 and 3.6 times higher than in 2014.

"Apart from that, our partners noted that the reform of  SOEs is being pursued in two directions - the reform of corporate governance of strategic state-owned enterprises, which should remain in state ownership, and the privatization of the remaining enterprises, which would reduce the amount of state-owned assets," he added.

The European Union also commended positive progress achieved in  terms of corporate governance implementation and in preparation of  SOEs for privatization.

The Minister recalled that the Government has also adopted the basic principles of the state property policy, on the basis of which property policies will be shaped for those enterprises that are still owned by the state.

Touching upon the progress of privatization, Olexandr Saienko stressed that the European partners commended the progress achieved in small-scale privatization which allowed to sell small assets through a simplified, transparent procedure. The European Union expects the sale of several hundred small  SOEs by the end of the year, as  regards the privatization of large SOEs, the  State  Property  Fund has  recently  appointed privatization advisers for large SOEs (namely 11 enterprises), aimed at their privatization in 2019.

The European Union paid serious attention to the  PAR in Ukraine in the said report. Experts emphasized that a  centralised,   transparent   and   merit-based  recruitment system has been launched for positions at Ministries, Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and two agencies  through a dedicated web-platform (career.gov.ua) with close  to 24000  applications  received for approximately 1010 positions published.  The Government of Ukraine has initiated the process of  updating its PAR  Strategy till 2020  in  line  with  recommendations  of  a  baseline  measurement  of Ukraine's public administration prepared by the EU-OECD 'SIGMA' programme.

"So, in all directions, we have a lot of work ahead, but such an assessment from the colleagues gives us strength to work more and we will move forward,"  the Minister claimed.

For more information: Association Implementation Report on Ukraine.