Farmland market, improved investment climate among top priorities, Zelenskiy says

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky listed his top
priorities at a June 20 business forum in Kyiv, “Dialogue between State
Authorities and Business.” They are tightly cooperating with IFIs, further
integrating with the EU, advancing to the Top Ten of the World Bank’s Doing
Business ratings in 3-4 years, eliminating limits on farmland sale, privatizing
the state’s non-core assets, introducing tax amnesty, fighting corruption –
especially in the courts, protecting competition, limiting monopolies, creating
a special service to exclusively oversee business and financial affairs, and
boost natural gas production. The key goal is to form a positive image of
Ukraine to the extent that “a waiting line of investors would stay here,”
Zelensky said.

Among other topics, Zelensky said that he reached
preliminary agreement with top businessmen (Rinat Akhmetov, Victor Pinchuk and
Ihor Kolomoisky) to invest in social and infrastructure projects to rebuild the
Donbas region affected by the war with Russia, estimating the needed costs at
UAH 300 bln. The prior day, Zelensky announced plans to organize an investment
forum to rebuild Donbas in September. Zelensky also he reached an agreement
with Akhmetov that the “Rotterdam Plus” approach in calculating the electricity
prices of thermal power plants will be cancelled.

Zelensky expects that the new Cabinet of Ministers
will be formed in September and assured the forum he will “respect and protect
the independence of National Bank of Ukraine.”

Alexander Paraschiy: Zelensky’s priorities look really encouraging, and some of the things
he mentioned (IFI cooperation, farmland market, privatization, creating a
financial investigations body) are easy to implement quickly, provided the
Cabinet and parliament are in agreement. That can happen after the
parliamentary elections in late July, which are now certain after yesterday’s Constitutional
Court ruling. Other goals, like fighting corruption and monopolies, are
mid- to long-term efforts. But we see that even implementing a minimal set of
priorities would radically improve Ukraine’s investment climate that would
stimulate hard currency inflow and economic growth.