The Ukrainian government is preparing a large-scale deregulation of business

The government has begun work on a significant expansion of economic freedoms in Ukraine through mass deregulation of business. This was reported by the First Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Economy Yuliya Svyridenko. It is stated on the department’s website.

The Interagency Working Group (IWG) on deregulation proposed to the Cabinet of Ministers to cancel 47% of licenses and permits. The corresponding decision was made at the first meeting of the Working Group on January 26.

According to the First Deputy Prime Minister, a free regulatory environment is an important factor in economic growth.

“Ukraine has set a goal of making a leap from a transitional economy to a developing economy within ten years. To do this, we must significantly increase the level of economic freedoms in Ukraine. And deregulation is one of the steps towards this goal. We eliminate tools that prevent business from working normally, among which there are vestiges of Soviet times. We will significantly simplify and digitize the tools necessary to protect the interests of society,” noted Yuliya Svyridenko.

The work will begin with the tools that are taken care of by the Ministry of Economy. They intend to liquidate almost half of them and modernize the rest. In the future, the IWG will develop regulatory instruments that belong to the sphere of competence of other authorities.

In particular, at the first IWG on deregulation, it was proposed to cancel:

• permission to re-export goods originating from other countries;
• approval for issuing licenses for export operations with crude oil of Ukrainian origin and natural gas in a gaseous state of Ukrainian origin under foreign economic contracts (agreements);
• individual (one-time licenses) in the field of export-import.

In addition to the immediate cancellation, the IWG also recommended optimizing about a third of the instruments that belong to the competence of the Ministry of Economy, a part of which is recommended to be transferred to other ministries and agencies.

The developed draft decisions will be agreed with the relevant departments and submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers for consideration.

The interdepartmental working group on issues of accelerated review of instruments of state regulation of economic activity (IWG on deregulation) was created by the government’s decision on January 13, 2023.

As GMK Center reported earlier, NBU worsened the forecast of Ukraine’s GDP growth for 2023 from 4% to 0.3% in the previous forecast. The worsening of expectations is primarily related to the consequences of energy terror on the part of the Russian Federation, as well as a revision of the assumption regarding the duration of security risks’ preservation.