Privatization Yields UAH 1.3 Billion in Budget Revenues

Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Economic Policy, Managing the Nation’s Economy, Property and Investment Oleksiy Kostusiev has announced that his committee considers it necessary to support the State Property Fund and will not suggest that Parliament make any categorical decisions concerning its report on privatization in 1999, slated to be submitted on October 18. As he put it, the SPF faces “colossal work” in order to achieve the 2001 privatization goals, and “we will firmly ask” how. Mr. Kostusiev considers realistic the privatization revenues of UAH 9.2 billion anticipated by the government in the 2001 budget bill, UNIAN reports. He emphasized that all talk about such revenues being unrealistic gives the State Property Fund chairman and the fund itself “a moral justification not to try to attain this goal.” According to the Ministry of Finance, from the beginning of the year privatization has yielded a mere UAH 1.283 billion vs. the anticipated UAH 2.266 billion in revenue for ten months.