Sending law enforcement officers in balaclavas armed with Kalashnikovs kicking down a company’s office door in a frantic search for financial records or tax documents is quite possibly the worst message a government can send to business owners, shareholders or executives. This is what I told President Petro Poroshenko a couple of years ago in a hall packed with five hundred business leaders during one of his regular meetings with the international business community. Consequently, parliament introduced new legislation curtailing the brutality of business inspections. These dramatic raids on business are now all but a memory of the low points that investors faced while doing business in Ukraine years ago. Many reforms have been introduced since 2015, and Ukraine has started reappearing on investors’ radar screens. However, foreign direct investment (FDI) remains too small, around 2 percent of GDP.
2019 Presidential Election
OP-ED
Andy Hunder: What the business community wants from Ukraine’s next president
Viktor Suvorov.This skeletal building on Baseyna near Besarabska Square was to have been turned into a $283 million business center, but theproject has been stalled and city officials think it may be time to pull out of the joint venture deal.
