One reason for joy and two reasons for concern

The State Property Fund of Ukraine has one reason for joy and two reasons for concern. The Fund is ahead the privatization schedule (instead of 10 billion hryvnias it has transferred to the state budget 11 billion). On December 8, two documents prepared by this department were entered on the agenda of the Verkhovna Rada: the bill on the State Property Fund (adopted in the second reading for the first time in the Ukrainian history) and the project of the state privatization program for 2011-14.

The majority and the opposition hardly have any serious difficulties these questions concerned (however, the latter insist that the law provides for accountability of the Fund to the parliament, the government objects and the fraction of the Party of Regions has not worked out its opinion yet). Regardless of this, both documents should have good prospects. However, it is unknown whether the president vetoes them or not and it makes the ground for anxiety. However, the staff of the State Property Fund is yet more anxious because of the necessity to fire every third worker by December 28 for the first time over the 20 years the State Property Fund has existed.

What is more, the privatization program reads that its last third stage (2013-14) provides for finishing the privatization as the large social and economic project and suggesting the new functions of the governing bodies. In other words, work done, time for fun, the more that the State Agency for Management of State Corporate Rights has been recently created within the bounds of the administrative reform and the Fund seems to be forgotten.

However, when this question arose during the expert discussion of the abovementioned projects, head of the Fund Oleksandr Riabchenko supported by his two former colleagues MPs Oleksandr Bondar (NU-NS) and Mykhailo Chechetov (the Party of Regions) assured that the ownership relations will always exist and somebody has to regulate them. He supposes that the Fund and the Agency aiming at creating a system of industrial and management holding companies in Ukraine (in other words, the system of the state business) are not competitors at least because the State Property Fund controls several thousands lease contracts of the state property.

As for the privatization program that will finish in a couple of years (some of the experts doubt that the program intended for four years can be completed in three), nearly 500 corporations are involved into this process and the state will still have 4,300 enterprises. The program provides for the new rules. The Fund is sure that they open “new possibilities for the state, investors, and Ukrainian citizens.” The money received will be transferred to the budget in full and used to develop the social and economic infrastructure, priority innovative scientific, and technical programs, and to resume the solvency of the strategic enterprises. As sociologist Yevhen Kopatko noted during the discussion, the workers of the enterprises that will be privatized have to be explained that they will not only stay at their working places but their number will grow. He predicts that if the information is presented correctly the public opinion will support the Fund.

Oleksandr Paskhaver, president of the Center for Economic Development and one of the “fathers” of the Ukrainian privatization thinks that the new documents by the State Property Fund allow detailing its place in the system of the executive authorities. However, one of the founders of the Fund Anatolii Otchenash sees serious risks. He mentions the problems of the stock market and system of crediting; as a result, the small and medium-sized businesses are “cut off” from the privatization that, in his opinion, became nearly oligarchic. However, Riabchenko, Bondar, and Chechetov unanimously say that the bad privatization is better than its slowdown since in this case the state property is just pilfered.