Ukraine needs complete change of paradigm to recover from recession, says outgoing economy minister Kyiv, August 22 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine will be able to accelerate the pace of economic growth to 6-10% which will allow the country to recover from recession only with the complete change of its economic and management paradigm, Economic Development and Trade Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Sheremeta has said, explaining the reasons for his resignation. I tried to say for five or six months that the present paradigm does not work now, and it will not work in the future. The paradigm is the structures, processes and people. For example, the attitude to business: the state should not treat business like a predator, the minister said at a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday. He said that this year the government forecasts a fall of the economy by 6-7%, next year – growth of 0.3-2% and in 2016 – by some 3%. It will take three or four years to reach the zero of 2013, even not 2008. This is very sad, Sheremeta said. Commenting on the attitude to business, he took as an example the investigation of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) into the operation of several companies regarding the excise labels of 2011 in the conditions when law-enforcement agencies obviously have more important tasks. The minister added that he managed to ban all checks, apart from the State Fiscal Service, by the end of 2014, although many supervision agencies are actively trying to achieve the decision to be revised. We should treat those things that are the most urgent now – this is the fact that business is not working, this is a depression. One cannot treat it using antibiotics. We should prove to business that there are serious changes via the facilitation, reduction and optimization of the number of supervision agencies, the cancelation of ineffective taxes and a considerable cut in pressure, Sheremeta said. He said he believes that Ukraine should decide to conduct radical reforms and then in six months a return from business will be seen, as happened in Poland or Georgia, and Ukraine should hold negotiations with international financial organizations on financial aid for this six-month period. The minister said that the major part of these ideas has been drawn up and they are lying on the table. In particular, he reminded a package of 150 initiatives on the deregulation in six key sectors, a draft tax reform, electronic state procurement which reduce corruption, restructuring of the ministry, which will allow reducing the staff but increase incentives and attract new people of tomorrow. Sheremeta said that the reason of his resignation was the staff issue – the refusal to appoint Yuriy Butsa deputy minister for European integration and the approval of Valeriy Piatnytsky Ukraines Trade Representative, whose candidate was not submitted by Sheremeta and no one agreed the candidate with him. The minister said that in more than five months of running the post he agreed to practically no appointments from parties, as there were questions about the skills of these people. He said he did this using various ways, sometimes playing the role of a deaf and dumb person. Asked about his attitude to Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk, he named him the best prime minister in the history of Ukraine. I wrote a letter to him where I thank Arseniy Petrovych for the opportunity [of being a minister], and I wished him success, Sheremeta said. The minister added that he does not have clear plans to take part in the election campaign to the new parliament. [I resigned] not because Im stepping on the political pre-election path. If there were chief-managed parties again, I will be more effective in other halls and fields, he said. He said that he sees the necessity of entering a force to the parliament that would protect business and fight populism, and it would be interesting for him to see how society will take to these ideas. Commenting on the possible candidate to the post of the Economic Development and Trade Minister, he said that among 45 million people one can find many skilled candidates. He said that he had passed his powers to his first deputy Anatoliy Maksiuta. Sheremeta added that the opinion about the minister as a pure technocrat who signs papers is a mistake. Communications is half of work of tomorrows minister. In the XXI century, when thanks to social networks there is one step to society, the government and ministers have to be communicators… There are better specialists to sign documents than I am, he said. Sheremeta is the founder of Kyiv Mohyla Business School, President of Kyiv School of Economics, from 2008 to 2011 he was president and senior consult of the Malaysias National Blue Ocean Strategy. He became minister on February 27, 2014 when the present structure of government headed by Arseniy Yatseniuk was approved. Instead of continuing to fight with yesterdays system, I decided to focus on the work with tomorrows people who will create tomorrows system, he wrote on his page on Facebook.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 09:00:06 +0000
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