The State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” is launching a pilot project to procure timber harvesting services through the Prozorro electronic platform, said the company’s CEO Yuriy Bolokhovets.
“Forestry enterprises have always procured harvesting services under direct contracts. We are planning to fully transfer them to open tenders. This is several billion hryvnias a year. In the fourth quarter, a pilot project will be launched in several regions. Specialists from the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” are analyzing the market and working on developing technical requirements,” Bolokhovets said.
According to him, the reform is expected to create a competitive market, attract the maximum number of players, invest in modern equipment and new technologies, create additional jobs, increase contributions to budgets of all levels, reduce illegal logging, and improve the quality of work.
“This is the fourth stage of the anti-corruption program we are implementing. At the first stage, we banned direct contracts and transferred timber sales to specialized exchanges. At the second stage, we transferred the main purchases of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” – from fuel to road construction – to Prozorro. At the third stage, we abandoned unprofitable processing facilities and started transferring them to the State Property Fund,” explained the head of the company.
Mr. Bolokhovets noted that the anti-corruption program of the Forests of Ukraine also includes strengthening control tools and digitalization. However, the problem of corruption can only be overcome by institutional reforms, the creation of a system that minimizes the “official factor” and introduces transparent and open rules of the game for business, he emphasized.
The pilot project on the national geospatial data infrastructure, operating already more than a thousand sets of geological data from different regions of the country, will be presented to the public in May and implemented throughout Ukraine in 2021, Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Roman Leschenko has said during a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency.
“Now the portal is in trial operation. Soon, anyone will be able to enter and, using a simple search, view information not only about the natural resources of the state, but also familiarize themselves with the established restrictions, protected zones or red lines. In the framework of the pilot project, all this information will be in free access,” the minister said.
Leschenko said that the introduction of the national geospatial data infrastructure will make it possible to fully digitize all data sets on the territory of Ukraine, deregulate existing procedures, open public access to information, create added value in every aspect of geospatial data, attract investment and minimize the impact of bureaucratic components. The work of the portal will also ensure greater efficiency of management and increase citizens’ confidence in the authorities.
He clarified that during the implementation of the project, citizens and foreign investors will be able to get access to open data through the geoportal without contacting officials, which will minimize the possible corruption component. The minister recalled that the first stage of the project was completed in December 2020, it was implemented in Lviv and Kharkiv regions, Lviv, Zhytomyr, Bila Tserkva, Mykolaiv, Mariupol and Poltava, as well as 75 united territorial communities throughout the country.
According to Leschenko, at the moment, the implementation of the second stage of the project is ongoing, more than a thousand data sets of various types and territorial affiliations are already available on the portal. In the future, as the portal is filled with data, the introduction of additional services, analytical elements and additional cases for each sphere of the Ukrainian economy was announced.
He noted that the uniqueness of the national geospatial data infrastructure system lies in the fact that all the data that will be reflected in it is not collected physically, but integrated using online services. For example, if in Lviv changes are made to urban planning documentation or local orthophotomaps are updated, it will instantly appear on the national geoportal.
“We understand very well that any data lose relevance after copying, therefore the main uniqueness of the system is its ability to display all data in real time. They are not just physically collected, but integrated using online services. In addition, all services are available for citizens in a machine-readable format, which makes it possible to integrate this system with similar resources,” the minister said.
Leschenko noted the positive dynamics of filling the geoportal with information in connection with the receipt by the communities of expanded management powers and predicts an increase in the amount of data in the system by several times by the end of this year. According to him, the adoption by the Verkhovna Rada of bill No. 2194 on amendments to the Land Code of Ukraine will also speed up this process.
“At the moment, the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre has developed and agreed with the central executive authorities and submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers a draft resolution on the procedure for the functioning of the national geospatial data infrastructure. We expect that in the near future this resolution will be approved and a ready-made comprehensive legal basis for the functioning of the national infrastructure will appear, including for the functioning of the portal,” first deputy head of the service Anatoliy Miroshnychenko, who took part in the press conference, said.
According to the minister, the service is working on a project that will ensure the functioning of the agricultural land market in Ukraine. This consolidated portal will display land use data and related data from the State Tax Service, the Ministry of Justice, the State Judicial Administration, the State Water Agency and other departments.
“We are actually entering the geoportal, which is the beginning of a new stage in the development of the state. It is very important that in the 30th year of independence we are moving away from departmental and closed work with geospatial data to the most open, transparent and understandable digital process,” Leschenko said.
As reported, the national geospatial data infrastructure project is being implemented within the framework of the land reform initiated by the president in 2019.
The Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers has approved a decree on the implementation of the National Operator in the Tobacco Products Market pilot project.
“On behalf of the minister, please, put the Cabinet of Ministers’ draft decree on the implementation of the National Operator in the Tobacco Products Market pilot project on the agenda,” Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture Svitlana Panaiotidi said during a government meeting on Wednesday.
The decree was approved with a three-day revision.
The document was drafted by the Economy Ministry along with the Finance Ministry in order to strengthen control and take urgent steps to combat tax evasion, smuggling and counterfeit in pursuance of the instructions of the Prime Minister of Ukraine, as well as following the conciliatory meetings held at the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) with the participation of the Economy Ministry, the Finance Ministry, the Interior Ministry, Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU), Svitlana Panaiotidi said.
According to the deputy minister, this pilot project will be implemented by the end of 2021.
Health Ministry of Ukraine has initiated rescheduling of a pilot project on 2D coding (the special QR code on packages) of medicine packages, acting Health Minister Ulana Suprun said at a press conference on Wednesday. “Due to the need to bring 2D coding into line with the EU requirements, we will initiate amendments into the government’s decree, which envisaged the launch of a pilot project from September 1, 2019. Producers and government agencies were not ready for this,” she said.
According to Suprun, profile associations backed rescheduling of the project, in particular because Economic Development and Trade Ministry failed to work out the procedures for introduction of this system.
Director General of Health Ministry’s Pharmaceutical Directorate Oleksandr Komarida has reported that the required amendments now are being drafted for the respective government’s decree and by the end of the week they will be put for a public discussion.
According to Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Association of Manufacturers of Innovative Medicines Vitaliy Hordiyenko, the amendments will affect the content of the information that will be encoded.
He noted that at present production sites of foreign manufacturers had necessary equipment for applying coding, however, it is not used for medicines manufactured for Ukraine, since manufacturers do not know what information the code should contain.
As reported, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved a pilot project on introduction of 2D control marking and monitoring of medicines, which is part of the Concept for the Implementation of the State Policy for Prevention of Medication Falsification.
As expected, the project to be fulfilled from September 1, 2019 to December 31, 2020.
APS Holding (Prague, the Czech Republic), a large provider of investment and recovery services in Central Europe, jointly with Avistar (Kyiv), which has been operating on the Ukrainian toxic assets market for over nine years, is launching a pilot project – Gefest Group, Avistar Managing Partner Yuri Kostrobiy said at a briefing. According to him, under the Gefest Group pilot project, it is planned to build a service and investment structure with the introduction of a modern IT system throughout the entire cycle of work with toxic debts based on EU standards. Building an efficient service mechanism, procedures for servicing and working with distress assets is the main task of the pilot project, Kostrobiy said.
Director of the Department for Consolidated Sale of Assets of the Deposit Guarantee Fund of Ukraine Taras Yeleiko said at the briefing that APS Holding’s entry into the Ukrainian market is a landmark event for the Ukrainian non-performing loan (NPL) market.
“We are happy that such players as APS enter Ukraine who can move our market to the best global practices and make this movement irreversible,” he said.
The Deposit Guarantee Fund is one of the key players in the NPL market, which manages assets totaling more than EUR 18 billion, which were received as a result of the bankruptcy of more than 90 banks in the period from 2014 to 2018.
Uber plans to launch the Uber Shuttle pilot project, a servicing to book a seat in a minibus that will drive from one pre-arranged location along a fixed route to another pre-arranged location within the city, in Kyiv in May 2019, the press service of Uber has told Interfax-Ukraine.
This service is also available in Cairo (Egypt) and Monterrey (Mexico).
Uber said that during the pilot project, customers will be able to book a seat in the minibus via the Uber application.
“Uber strives to become a multimodal platform for personal mobile services, giving users access to various modes of transport with the click of a button, so that they can move around the city without need of having their own car. With the pilot launch of Uber Shuttle in Kyiv, we offer the experience of using this service to users here in Ukraine,” the press service said, citing Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) Head at Uber Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty.
The company said that the main goal of the pilot project is the use of Uber technology, to offer Ukrainian users another alternative way to travel around the city.
“This pilot project is part of Uber’s mobility strategy available on the platform,” Uber said.
Gore-Coty also said that Ukraine is very important for Uber, and the company will continue investing in the country, promoting new products on the Ukrainian market.
