On January 24, the conference “Strategic vision of the recovery of Ukraine” was held with the participation of members of the Ukrainian Business Council (UBC), which includes 113 business associations from various sectors of the economy, the head of the parliamentary committee on the organization of state power, local self-government, regional development and urban planning, Olena Shulyak, First Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy Yaroslav Zhelezniak and Business Ombudsman Roman Vashchuk.
During the meeting, they discussed the National Revenue Strategy-2030, the Facility Ukraine Plan and the new draft law on improving mobilization,
The discussion began with the presentation of research findings on the country’s development opportunities under the conditions of the functioning of institutions of inadequate quality. It was presented by Volodymyr Dubrovskyi, a senior economist at CASE-Ukraine, a specialist at the Economic Expert Platform. In his opinion, the main problem in Ukraine is the rule of law, which is still in its infancy, which in a developed country should limit the arbitrary decisions of the authorities.
“There is such a phenomenon as national non-compliance with the law: when the majority does not follow the law, it is rational for a person not to follow the law either,” the expert noted.
According to Dubrovskyi, Ukraine should adopt the experience of countries with a higher level of rule of law – carefully and carefully.
“It is necessary to adapt it and, first of all, to remove discretion from it, to carry out judicial reform over time, to change the corporate culture, up to a complete reboot, and to carry out a deep revision of the legislation in order to remove from it all unenforceable laws, discretion and contradictions”, – said Volodymyr Dubrovsky .
At the same time, the National Income Strategy 2030 adheres to the opposite principles: instead of reducing discretion, it increases it. It expands the powers of the tax service, making it possible to seize business accounts and property without court decisions, offers disclosure of bank secrecy and other risk norms, which are completely inappropriate for countries with our level of development.
Yaroslav Zheleznyak noted that the National Strategy from the government should be treated “with cautious optimism, as with all previous strategies.”
He focused on some of its points, which are not accepted by society, in particular, regarding the return to strict fiscal measures.
“From this Strategy, we need to choose those sections that are most suitable for our country and move them forward. After all, today we are unable to finance the budget on our own and depend in many ways on external partners, and the Memorandum with the IMF contains points that we need to fulfill. In particular, the Memorandum stated the need to adopt the National Strategy – this was done,” Yaroslav Zhelezniak emphasized.
“I would emphasize the powers, restoration of trust in institutions, which are in the conclusions of research of analytical centers. I completely agree – everything starts with institutions, in particular DPS and DMS. The good news, I believe, is that many of these institutions can be built, if only to try to do so. We will not do worse, it is simply impossible. Among the things that can be done in the near future: restarting the BEB, the Customs and, of course, the Tax Service. We have a window of opportunity, for the first time these requirements (in particular regarding BEB) are included by international partners, so no one will ask the opinion of the authorities,” Yaroslav Zhelezniak noted.
Olena Shulyak shares the concerns of business and called on the business community to be active in discussing the National Strategy. She also reminded about the draft law on strengthening the inclusive dialogue between society, business and government – No. 4254 “On public consultations”, which was recommended to the government to be included in the plan for the Ukraine Facility program, and called for a public discussion of this document.
Olena Shulyak also focused on the issue of restarting the Bureau of Economic Security:
“Business in the country did not increase with the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine, and law enforcement agencies did not decrease. And such an imbalance has brought the situation to a dead end, it is necessary to make a decision urgently”, – said the head of the Servant of the People party and assured that the developers of the relevant draft law have an understanding of the principles and standards the Bureau should work according to.
Among other things, the participants of the conference focused on other points of the National Strategy, which are negatively perceived by society, namely: the abolition of the simplified taxation system, the introduction of a progressive scale of personal income tax taxation, the issue of FOPs, the conduct of searches by law enforcement officers without proper grounds, which contradicts the presumption of innocence.
Business ombudsman Roman Vashchuk emphasized that it is extremely difficult to work when all the heads of key state bodies are acting, it is necessary to reboot the BEB, DPS, DMS so that these services are headed by the best specialists who will win transparent competitions.
Mykhailo Nepran, the first vice president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, noted that he had already seen many strategies for decades, usually they are implemented only partially, by a quarter or a third. So let’s hope that the same will happen with the National Strategy, business will contribute to the implementation of only the positive half of the Strategy, everything else remains only on paper.
Olena Khotenko, Association of Taxpayers of Ukraine emphasized that the National Strategy was developed secretly, without consultation with analytical centers and business, and accordingly, we have a low quality document. With the national income strategy, the Cabinet of Ministers is trying to foresee modern European tools and practices, without having the main one – the European rule of law, the European quality of public administration, the European low level of corruption in state bodies.
Consistency in this matter is extremely important – first, it is necessary to implement institutional reforms, in particular to completely restart the Bureau of Economic Security, the State Tax and Customs Service (draft laws 10088-1, 6490d, 9243), complete the judicial reform, implement the reform of law enforcement agencies, and only after that it is possible to move to European discretion and additional powers to inspectors and law enforcement agencies.
Borys Emeldesh, president of the All-Ukrainian Professional Association of Entrepreneurs drew attention to an important aspect: the National Strategy seems to suggest reforming the DPS and DMS first, and then moving on to other instruments. But measuring the quality of the work of the DPS and the DPS – the National Strategy relies on the Ministry of Finance and the DPS. This cannot be a qualitative measurement because there is a conflict of interest.
The success of the implementation of the first stage – the creation of high-quality state administration, the rule of law, non-corrupt state bodies – should be measured exclusively with the help of transparent metrics and recognized methodologies, the accuracy of which is verified, such as Worldwide Governance Indicators.
Government representatives called on the business community to more actively voice their proposals regarding the National Revenue Strategy and the resolution of other problems they face.
According to the results of the conference, they agreed on joint work on the discussed projects and further cooperation.