Usually government gets blamed for the slow pace of reforms to improve the investment climate.
But businesses deserve some of the blame, a top government official told a conference this week.
At Ukrainian Telecoms Forum 2015 that collected more than 150 visitors and 36 speakers from business and governmental side on May 26-27, Dmytro Shymkiv, the deputy head of the Presidential Administration, expressed his disappointment with the lack of feedback from the telecom and IT businesses on what needs to be done by government to improve the market conditions.
“We do not receive any offers of issue solutions from the industry,” Shymkiv said. “Without questions being asked, issues won’t be solved. We understand that we cannot solve all issues, but in order to make a step forward to reach the solution, we need to hear the question.”
Shymkiv mentioned the absence of Internet regulation as the major problem that exists, but the telecom providers in Ukraine try to avoid mentioning it. Solving it means high costs for them.
“When businesses close eyes (on the issue), because money is more important, the government intrudes. Then, however, the freedom of speech gets hurt,” he says. To move along with the solution and not harm Internet freedom, operators must offer the most acceptable model of negotiating it themselves.
The lack of copyright protection over the Internet, the spread of Russian propaganda, pornographic content, a huge amount of cyber attacks and Internet bots’ activities affect businesses in much larger scale than regular network users. Since the issue gets very critical, either the government or the operators must solve it as soon as possible, Shymkiv believes.
Being the member of Parliament from Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc, Olha Belkova shared her own dissatisfaction with the lack of action from government’s side instead.
Belkova has been in parliament since 2012 and says she “tried as hard as possible to attract investments in Ukraine.” The bill on e-commerce that she wrote has managed to pass only the first reading so far. If adopted, it could raise companies like Amazon, the global online retailer, in Ukraine and grow the culture of online sales and payments.
“Rada (the parliament) never has enough time because of other “more important” things being discussed there, like assigning tax benefits or renaming villages,” Belkova says. “It does too little and I am disappointed.”
Belkova also mentioned a problem with the lack of intellectual rights protection. “The politicians do not like to talk about it, because electorate reacts negatively to it, willing to download free pirated content over the Internet,” Belkova says. “Until we solve the issue, IT sector won’t grow. We won’t have anything to be proud of. This is just one of the reforms we are obliged to do.”
Elena Voloshina, the head of the representative office of International Finance Corporation, stressed another issue not being taken care of properly – Ukrainian tech specialists fleeing Ukraine massively.
According to Voloshina, the IT sector became as prospective for Ukraine as the agricultural one. The foreign investors value Ukrainian tech talents, but they also realize the risk of investing in the Ukrainian companies because of geopolitical conditions, so they “buy out” the whole team.
“We need to think how we can stop teams from being bought out,” Voloshina says. “Good schools, accommodation, work conditions need to be provided. It is not that much, I think.”
In support of Belkova’s points Oleksandr Kardakov, the chairman at the supervisory board of Octava Capital, said that the government needs to guarantee the rule of law first thing. Only then “IT can become the medicine to the government’s sickness.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe.
