ProZorro.Sale, an electronic auction platform, will be used this year to sell smaller items of state property as a part of a large-scale privatization effort, while over 600 big enterprises will be sold through investment advisers and banks, a Ukrainian government official has said.
“We’re going to announce tenders in the end of May,” Deputy Minister for Economic Development and Trade Max Nefyodov said at an investment conference held in Kyiv on March 1 by Dragon Capital, an investment firm.
For privatization to start, law No. 7066, which was passed by parliament in January, has to be signed by President Petro Poroshenko. Finance Minister Oleksandr Danilyuk, speaking at the same conference, said this might happen in the next few days.
Launched in 2016 in collaboration with Transparency International, ProZorro.Sale has sold Hr 6 billion worth of assets of insolvent banks and state enterprises through online auctions. On Feb. 28 it was named among the winners of the Shield in the Cloud innovation award from U.S. investment firm C5, which specializes in cyber security, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.
Nefyodov also pointed to the importance of increasing efficiency in public sector.
“We talk a lot about corruption but we don’t say that a lot of possibilities for wrongdoing lie in inefficiency and lack of qualified people,” he said.
“After three years, I can tell you that inefficiency brings more harm than corruption.”
