IMF-required banking law draws over 16,000 amendments

Ukrainian MPs have filed about 16,335 amendments to a bill on banking, required by the IMF,
that includes restricting the return of failed banks to their former
shareholders (the so-called anti-Kolomoisky law), Voice party MP Yaroslav
Zhelezniak, a member of the parliamentary finance committee, wrote in his blog
on Apr. 7. This is a record high for amendments submitted for a bill. Recall, the bill was approved in the first reading on Mar. 30
and MPs had one week to offer amendments for the bill’s second reading. The
law’s approval, which in particular will make it impossible to return
Privatbank to its former owners, Ihor Kolomosly and Gennadiy Bogolyubov, is a
key precondition for the IMF to initiate its loan program for Ukraine estimated
at about USD 8 bln.

Recall, another highly opposed bill that was required
by the IMF, the farmland market legislation, also drew an avalanche of amendments.
The parliament spent 11 session days (between Feb. 6 and Mar. 31) reviewing
4,018 amendments in the session hall.

Alexander Paraschiy:
Interestingly, the number of proposed amendments to the bill exceeds the number
of words in the first draft (16,075). Over 96% of the amendments have been
filed by just seven MPs, all being aligned with Kolomoisky, according to local
media. Clearly, the only goal of such an excessive number of amendments is to
drag out the adoption of this bill for as long as possible. For instance, if
the parliament will review them with the same pace as the land reform law, it
will take 45 sessions (or over five months) to complete the review.

Consequently, if IMF support is delayed by six months,
the government will face critical liquidity issues. Therefore, some new
approach is needed to speed up the bill’s approval. It’s possible that
round-the-clock work of the finance committee could accelerate the bill’s
approval to 2-3 weeks. But this also won’t be easy considering that a number of
Kolomoisky-aligned MPs are members of that committee.

We expect more clarity on the timing of the bill’s
approval will surface in the coming days.