On January 25, an expert meeting was held with the participation of leading specialists of the World Bank (Karlis Smits, leading economist of the WB, Florian Blum, senior economist of the WB), representatives of Ukrainian business associations, members of the Ukrainian Business Council and specialists of analytical centers.
Specialists of the analytical centers CASE Ukraine and ISET spoke about the conclusions of recent studies, according to which the quality of fundamental institutions in Ukraine as of 2022 did not even come close to the level that the countries of Eastern Europe had when they implemented their successful reforms in the early 1990s. x years No EU member state has had to deal with such an ambitious challenge of the institutional gap that Ukraine has to deal with. In the absence of European inclusive quality institutions – the use of only European tools and discretion – will lead to an increase in corruption opportunities, increased pressure on the business of current unreformed law enforcement and inspection bodies, and increased shadowing of the economy.
According to another expert study – evaluation of the largest tax evasion schemes – the largest schemes at the moment are also connected with weak institutions: the state loses UAH 100-150 billion every year from violation of customs rules and gray imports, from counterfeiting, illegal trade 40 – UAH 45 billion every year, from VAT schemes – UAH 20-30 billion.
Therefore, institutional changes, rebooting of the most corrupt bodies following the only successful examples in Ukraine of NABU and VAKS are long overdue.
Representatives of leading business associations, members of the URB emphasized that the Cabinet of Ministers is trying to provide modern European tools and practices with the National Revenue Strategy, without having the main thing – European rule of law, European quality of public administration, 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.
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 using transparent metrics and recognized methodologies, the accuracy of which is verified, such as Worldwide Governance Indicators.
The experts of the World Bank noted that Ukraine is moving towards the EU, so the implementation of European directives is necessary, at the same time, the construction of high-quality institutions must precede the application of complicated regulations and costly tools for business. The national revenue strategy provides for a number of important measures, so first of all it is necessary to implement those that will improve the work of state bodies and minimize corruption in the civil service.
Rebooting the BEB, DPS, DMS, judicial reform – these are the most important changes for the development of the economy, they should be implemented as a matter of priority.
As a result of the meeting, they agreed on cooperation and on holding further regular joint meetings.