Patience Runs Out

A very demonstrative trend, meaning that everyone's patience with the powers that be is at an end, including people directly dependent on the executive. "This hypocritical government is getting out of line. Time to show it its place," The Day was told by a reputable Kyiv businessman. Anyway, UAIE representatives, known for their boundless tolerance, were more diplomatic. To them, the Cabinet's next VAT demarche was like lancing an overripe throbbing boil. Yevhen Romanov, Chairman of the Board of the I. B. S. Firm, informed The Day's Mykhailo Bidenko that "laws and decrees issued by a government strongly resembling a dictatorship do not create jobs." Leonid Rubanenko, Chairman of the Council, Kharkiv regional office of UAIE, notes that "whenever the Cabinet works out the next resolution everything is done contrary to our needs."

And the Cabinet? It is being sarcastic. This February it referred to the financial condition of business entities as critical, as though it were excellent or at least bearable anytime previously. The impression is that the government has spent several years somewhere in Switzerland, knowing nothing about the "virtues" of Ukrainian taxation or complete anarchy of the controlling authorities (growing like mushrooms after rain), dropping hryvnia, stock market collapse, debts, and enfeebled budget. There are hair-raising Cabinet statistics saying that last year 55% industrial and 90% agricultural enterprises were in the red. All this did not start last year or even the year before. As of December 1, 1998, accounts payable were 1.6 times the gross domestic product (once again, this is official statistis).

So what conclusions did the government arrive at?

Minister of the Economy Vasyl Rohovy: "Payments to the budget are evidence that the taxpayers have consciously embarked on the road of ignoring the national interests." This author might add that this "conscious" ignoring the "national interests" is not the cause but the consequence, since the state has long worked for and finally achieved a relationship with business circles.