KYIV. April 30 (Interfax-Ukraine) – A mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will arrive in Ukraine on May 12, 2015, Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine Valeriya Gontareva said at a traditional meeting with bankers.
“Everyone points out that Ukraine demonstrates visible progress in reforming its economy in general and its financial sector in particular,” the NBU press service quoted Gontareva as saying on Wednesday.
According to her, the stabilization on the foreign exchange and deposit markets prepares grounds for the gradual liberalization of the retail deposit market, as well as lifting a number of restrictions on the foreign exchange market.
Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko earlier said an IMF mission for the first review of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program, after which Ukraine may be given the second tranche of the program worth SDR 1.182 billion (about $1.63 billion), is expected to arrive in Ukraine late in May.
KYIV. April 30 (Interfax-Ukraine) – EU Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn has said that the EU expects Ukrainian authorities to jointly hold the necessary reforms.
At the International Support for Ukraine Conference in Kyiv on Tuesday, Hahn said that he hoped that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk and the government would continue to execute the plan of reforms.
According to him, the Ukrainian government does a good job under the hardest conditions. He also said that the EU had to help Ukraine make the next most difficult steps and implement the adopted laws to change the political, administrative, trade and economic culture of the country.
Hahn noted the importance of conducting key reforms for the country in order to get long-term advantages.
The only thing that will help to open the potential of the country is reforms, he noted adding that the first steps had already been made, but there was still a lot of work to be done.
KYIV. April 30 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The State Aviation Service of Ukraine hopes that air space with the United States will be liberalized in June or July 2015, Service Head Denys Antoniuk said at the presentation of the Kyiv-Beijing flight by Ukraine International Airlines (UIA, Kyiv).
He said that the service in November 2014 sent the similar proposal to Chinese aviation authorities, although no response has been yet sent.
The service also plans to liberalize air space with Canada: Antoniuk said that the process is in a final stage.
KYIV. April 30 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Representatives of patient and nongovernmental organizations demand that Health Ministry punishes those persons who are guilty in the failure of conducting drug state procurement via international organizations this year.
“The minister personally made public statements that when the Verkhovna Rada passed bills Nos. 2150 and 2151 on March 19, the function of procurement will be transferred to international organizations in one month and a half. Nevertheless, no step was made in this direction. No bylaw that would have regulated the procurement process has been drawn up,” Board Chairman of Charitable Foundation ‘Patients of Ukraine’ Dmytro Sherembey said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.
Board Chairman of the ‘Anti-Corruption Center’ NGO Vitaliy Shabunin said that if the Health Ministry is not coping with the task, the function should be passed to other structures or persons.
“There are two reasons why the steps on the transfer of state procurement to international organizations are not seen: the first one is professional impropriety of persons from the Health Ministry and the second is a desire to retain previous corrupted schemes. It was not us who came up with the term of one month and a half, and it is not interesting for us at what stage the failure occurred,” he said.
Shabunin said that the delay of the process could be evidence of a desire to hold tenders in the extreme conditions when there is a lack of time and this would allow the corrupted persons to push forward their conditions.
KYIV. April 29 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The representative office of the Ukrainian League of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (ULIE), which opened in Brussels on April 21, 2015, will help Ukrainian entrepreneurs to search for business partners, investors and sales markets in Europe, the ULIE’s press service reported.
According to ULIE President Anatoliy Kinakh, this is extremely important as it is being carried out before the establishment of a free trade area between Ukraine and the European Union (EU), which will become effective as of January 1, 2016.
“We will suggest focusing on the development of the industrial sphere as well as small- and medium-sized businesses, which are the backbone of the economy, create jobs, and generate tax revenues for the national budget. It’s of paramount importance under the conditions of economic crisis and before the changes Ukrainian enterprises will face following the full inauguration of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) between Ukraine and the EU next year,” Kinakh said.
According to him, Ukraine has to speed up the adaptation of its legislation to free trade conditions with the EU today. In particular, Ukraine should speed up the introduction of EU technical and sanitary standards, mutual recognition of certificates of conformity for products, and the harmonization of tax legislation with EU norms and regulations.
The ULIE Office is developing cooperation with all of the EU institutions – the European Parliament (EP), the European Commission (EC), the External Action Service, etc. – in order to intensify the European integration process. Its relations with BUSINESSEUROPE – the leading EU organization of entrepreneurs and employers including more than 40 national entrepreneurs’ associations of European businesses, are also very important.
The ULIE Office is planning to include the Ukrainian side in talks on the possible revision of the EU Neighborhood Policy concerning Ukraine, especially its businesses. “European support is almost unavailable for Ukrainian businesses, first of all, because of unrealistic conditions of crediting. We will raise this issue when communicating with our European colleagues in order to change the situation, streamline cooperation mechanisms with nowadays reality, and bring specific results,” Kinakh said.
The ULIE Office in Brussels will carry out a very important information function – giving Ukrainian businesses an opportunity to learn about various EU institutions’ programs.
The Interfax-Ukraine News Agency was the media partner of the Office opening in Brussels and has set up a specific information product – Ukraine Open for Business – containing Ukrainian business news for Europeans, which will help European partners better understand Ukrainian economic trends and prospects.
KYIV. April 28 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Preconditions to develop competition between medical centers of various forms of ownership should be created to develop insurance medicine in Ukraine, Director General of Dila medical laboratory Oleksiy Babich has said.
“The creation of the state insurance company is an absolutely corrupted idea. Until there is real competition between private insurance companies there will be no real, not nominal, insurance medicine. Until there is competition between the state, municipal and private healthcare centers for the money of insurance companies and competition for patients and skilled doctors, there will not be high-quality medical services,” he said.
Commenting on the prospects of the introduction of insurance medicine in Ukraine and reform of the healthcare system in general, Babich said that insurance medicine will appear in 10 years through evolution, not earlier, while there is no healthcare system in the country.
Babich said that clear treatment protocols and the calculated cost of medical services should exist for the introduction of insurance medicine. He said he was perplexed over the fact that the healthcare system has not yet been calculated, as it is simple to do this.
He said that healthcare centers will only be efficient when they have owners.
“The country needs reforms, but those who are to introduce them do not need reforms: healthcare administrators and doctors,” the expert said. He said that doctors understand that their income will fall considerably, bad doctors will be left without jobs, and administrators will have to change greatly.
“The only possibility of reforming is the creation of the self-regulating system – competition between healthcare centers for the money of patients (insurance premiums). This competition will regulate the system in five or 10 years. Citizens are to decide themselves what insurance company to select to pay social security fees and they are to obtain the right to select hospitals where they will be treated,” Babich said.
