Although you won’t remember, in March 2011, I told you about Ukraine’s first wind farm. Yes I know it was a very short post, but as it said, it was a start.
Well since then alternative energy has progressed somewhat in Ukraine. Solar, hydroelectric bio-fuelled CHPs and wind. A lot of investment is going into alternative energy production, although not enough to prevent the next generation of civil nuclear power facilities being built.
In fact a lot of money is going into energy in Ukraine, be it alternative, energy efficiency, next generation nuclear, domestic oil and gas exploration and production, as well as Shell and Chevron yesterday being confirmed as tender winners for shale extraction in the west and east of Ukraine.
Of course there are environmental and ecological concerns no matter how energy is produced. 5000 exploratory wells anticipated between Shell and Chevron looking for shale gas, there is a major concern over huge areas of prime agricultural land being used for bio-fuel production at great cost to the soil, damage to ecosystems with hydroelectric production, flora and fauna damage via huge solar farms spreading across acres of land etc.
Quite simply there is no such thing a zero impact energy production any which way it is produced. Anybody who says otherwise is a liar. Even the component parts used to create alternative energy systems are manufactured using conventional energy in buildings constructed by and using materials creating with, conventional energy. They all have a massive energy legacy to repay prior to actually being beneficial to the planet.
If that sounds like I know what I am talking about it is because I do. I am a qualified civil engineer and have written numerous ISO 14001 environmental policies, environmental risk management programmes and audit procedures.
Anyway, back to Ukrainian alternative energy, and in particular – wind.
There is no doubt that Ukraine has huge potential in alternative energy production. Anybody who doubts that need simply follow the projects and acquisitions of DTEK, a company owned by the richest man in Ukraine, Rinat Akhmetov. Whilst he is best known for being an oligarch whose riches comes from metal production and also being the owner of Shakhtar Donetsk FC, only the willfully blind would not have noticed his serious investments into all areas of energy production over the past 3 or 4 years. Alternative energy is no exception when it comes to Mr Akhmetov’s energy investment portfolio.
It is therefore no surprise to find that the EBRD in conjunction with the EU’s Clean Technology Fund have decided to pour Euro 9.5 million and Euro 3.8 million respectively (Euro 13.3 million in total) into a Ukrainian/Italian company called Eco-Optima. The loan is over a 10 year period and payable in two tranches.
Eco-Optima intend to build a wind farm in Starry Sambir (near Lviv) that will consist of 5 wind turbines with an anticipated total annual production of 25.5 GWh. That is enough for just over 10,000 homes annual useage by my rough calculation, and also reduce carbon emissions by approximately 30,000 per year (in comparison to non-nuclear conventional energy production if we discount any energy legacy involved in production of the technology).
Maybe more encouragingly than anything I have written so far though, is that it is, to my knowledge, the first EBRD investment into Ukrainian wind – ever – which is a positive thing in and of itself!
The Ukrainian loss making State owned behemoth that is Naftogaz Ukraine is about to get broken down, reorganised but not, as the EBRD have stated is necessary over the years, privatised.
Actually that may not be quite accurate, there are certain parts of Naftogaz that are now legally banned from privatisation and others that quite possibly could be privatised.
What has been legally banned from privitisation, be it existing or newly created entities within the Naftogaz structure we are about to receive, is the following: Any part of the organisation that transports gas via pipeline through either trunk or distribution pipelines, underground storage facilities and Naftogaz itself.
Now you may think that leaves nothing to be privatised or partially privatised, but Naftogaz is a behemoth as I state. There is nothing to state that the Naftogaz subsidiaries such as exploration, transport, logistics (etc) entities under the umbrella of Naftogaz, are off limits to privitisation that I have found within the newly signed law.
All I can see is that the gas transport system, gas storage facilities and umbrella/holding company will remain State owned and legally cannot be privatised. This press release would seem to confirm that. The rest of the organisation’s subsidiaries, as far as I can tell, could well be privatised at some point in the future or indeed closed and their roles put out to private sector tender.
It is not unusual in Ukraine for the government to keep possession of certain parts of the nation’s infrastructure. Airports for example. The terminals and all integrated bits and pieces necessary to make an airport run can be owned or leased for long periods privately, but the runways remain the property of the State. The reason being, apparently, is that should there be a war, the State has immediate access to, and control of, all runways of Ukraine.
This goes someway to explaining many fairly nice and new modern airport terminals with runways that resemble suffering multiple IED incidents. The terminal owners are not overly keen to maintain a State owned runway when it is really a State responsibility. Likewise, the State know if they wait long enough, the terminal owners will eventually do something, even if it is the absolute minimum, to keep the runways serviceable.
Putting aside the inevitable conflicts and derelictions of responsibility where State meets private sector in Ukraine, it is possible to understand the retention of certain infrastructural assets by the State even if some would disagree with State ownership. Some prefer no State involvement, others possibly limiting it to a “golden share” scenario in any privitisation, and yet others are more inclined to give the State legal powers to simply take control of such assets in times of national emergency and rely on State regulations during times of peace. – Different nations use different models, some use all the models I have mentioned and more in different areas of the national infrastructure and for different reasons.
Your position is probably based on how narrow or broad an economic definition you would give to what is “public goods” and what you consider is a national strategic asset.
This brings us to the tricky issue (or not depending on how hard your views are) of the role of the State in national development, and in the case of Ukraine, it is probably fair to say it falls on the developing nation side of the line rather than that of developed, despite any infrastructural legacy of the USSR.
I would say it probably actually sits on the line and falls completely into neither the standard definition of developed or developing, as far as nations go.
If we compare Ukraine to the USA or Japan (or other similar “Old EU” nations) the development path is likely to be far harder and less swift but for reasons that we may not immediately recognise. It will be easier to blame the government (of which ever party is in power) for the lack of progression to reach those “Old European” standards, than it is to look back at the histories of the nations we are comparing them to and how they achieved their development successes.
Suffice to say, the State did have a big hand to play in those successes and in a far less globalised world, be it economically, business-wise and through international laws.
Nations like the US, UK, Germany, France, and others succeeded in creating a far better entrepreneurial climate than Ukraine. There is no denying that. Ukraine still manages to kill off much of the white economy and white entrepreneurs through the bureaucratic and corrupt legacies inherited from the USSR. Thus there is a large black economy, large black entrepreneurial base and a middle class that is small and in many cases un-auditable when it comes to discovering quite how their financial status and social strata has been achieved.
However, we must also recognise that the successful nations had State interference that created protectionism, subsidies and generally unfair trade conditions whilst building their developed nation status. Even today we can watch Senate economics hearings via live podcasts where economists will sit and plainly state the the US is a protectionist economy. The EU single market by nature and design is protectionist. There are subsidies galore for alternative energy R&D and alternative energy companies to give a modern, contemporary example. The controversial Common Agricultural Policy within the EU is yet another.
Such examples are bountiful when looking at the histories of the developed nations I have mentioned so far when it comes to insuring the establishment of a domestic sector via State protectionist practices before allowing a more liberal attitude.
The UK for instance even went as far as only allowing trade with other nations if the cargoes were carried by British ships. The US upon independence imposed incredibly high tariffs and import taxes in order to allow the newly founded nation to develop internal producers and demand for the internally produced goods. Even in the 1920′s the US maintained the highest import tariffs in the world, second only to Spain at the time.
German unification under Von Bismarck also brought with it incredibly high importation tariffs whilst Germany evolved internally through the State’s protectionist policies. State manipulation occurred again when East and West Germany unified.
Where Germany differs from the UK and US under Von Bismarck, is simply that the State at the time was driven by an elite who wanted industrialised development and entrepreneurial classes, where as the UK and US did it via democratic governance.
I could go on and on and list developed nation after developed nation that has employed protectism for prolonged periods to reach the their developed status and not just within Europe or citing the US, but you by now get what I am pointing you towards.
Protectionism is not an option for Ukraine, at least to the scale and over the prolonged period of time that the “model developed nations” employed it. Membership of the WTO, having to cede ground with the World Bank, IMF and others who have vested interests in Ukraine being opened up for the existing developed nations to enter, quite simply makes this a non-starter.
Ergo the protectionist policies that have allowed others to develop steadily and robustly whilst retaining absolute sovereignty beholding to none, have been replaced by the slower, liberal and politically manipulable method of foreign direct investment (FDI) to only open and liberal developing nations.
Now I have no interest in protecting or attempting to justify the 20 years of continually wrong or poorly thought out policies of successive governments in Ukraine, nor their consistently corrupt practices when it has been their turn at the public trough. Undoubtedly they, each and every one of them, have personally contributed to the lack of progress in Ukraine along with many of those they have appointed to run the agencies of State.
However, they are also not to blame for the time in history and global attitudes they have led Ukraine through, and having hoped to cast a light on the very different development paths available to those who have made it and those who are still in the process (now matter how retarded that process seems) maybe we can see some reasons why Naftogaz will remain a State owned company, why some subsidiary parts will not be privatised, why subsidies will continue to occur within the Naftogaz arena to the angst of external actors and why so much loss making infrastructure will remain, for want of a better label, “public goods” or deemed “strategic”.
Having written all of that, much of it still does not sit well with me as far as excessive State intervention is concerned, but as Aristotle put it, and who am I to argue, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it”.
That said, much of what seems to be the modern agreement between State and society (not only in Ukraine) doesn’t sit well with me either. I have the worrisome feeling that we as a society are far too keen to dump our personal responsibilities on the State and that the State in turn is far too keen to take them on. Maybe it’s an age thing?
OK. I thought about the final paragraphs of yesterday’s blog entry and I would like to ponder them a little more.
Specifically of the questions at the end, which were posed to nobody in particular, let’s think about the organised actors involved and what they are involved in. This post would be far too lengthy to mull over some broad, rather than specific, strategies to help address the situation, so I won’t. At least not today.
Before doing so, it is necessary for me to point out that I have had no involvement in being on “The Crown” side of the efforts with serious and organised crime, paramilitaries or groups legally recongised as “terrorists” for what is almost 20 years. Time change. Structures change on both sides. Tactics and strategies change.
In fact what I once knew as cutting edge will now mostly be obsolete, with the possible exception of human intelligence gathering, informants (and informant protocols). handlers, controllers etc and the models of collecting, collating, verifying and classifying of any intelligence gathered for operational or profiling reasons. All of that experience comes from the UK mainland and only occasionally did it involve other nations (such as Eire for obviously reasons at the time, and Turkey when I stumbled across unexpected PKK involvement in something, leading to months and months of ad hoc liaison with Special Branch, Regional Crime Squads et al).
Suffice to say, what experience I have, is probably now comparable to caveman etchings on a dank and wet wall verses a modern day Picasso. There was a beauty and a skill involved at the time, but not a patch on how things are done today I suspect.
So having made a declaration that I probably no longer know what I am writing about, I will continue regardless, otherwise this post would be pointless.
I have no intention of going into street crime or domestic policing abilities in Ukraine. That would be a different post should I venture down that very uneven road. I will stick to the organised criminality, be it genuinely organised crime for the sake of personal/group gain, or groups with other ideologies who involve themselves in organised crime to fund other activities, as was the case when I stumbled upon the PKK issue in the UK back in the mid 1990s.
One of the first things we must recognise is that there are certain actors within Ukrainian agencies who are easily bought off to either turn a blind eye or possibly take a more active role. Passive or active involvement are obviously debilitating factors when the State makes any attempts to fight the good fight.
Now there will be some readers who will say that combating drug trafficking is a pointless exercise and we, globally, would be better off legalising drugs, taxing them, subjecting them to quality controls etc. There is a good argument for that, certainly economically, but organised crime is not just about drug trafficking. Who would want their government to ignore the abhorrent issue of human trafficking for example? What of money laundering or illicit domestic sex and gambling trades? There is more than one good fight to be had with serious and organised crime. A wide lens is required when looking at this phenomenon.
So, what of organised crime in Odessa and Ukraine? Firstly it is important to recognise just how fluid it is. I know only two players in what can genuinely be identified as the “Odessa mafia”. We will call them Mr A and Mr V. Ignoring their foot soldiers and the numerous black shinning BMW X5′s and X6′s they tend to drive around in convoy everywhere, their nefarious activities and profiles are otherwise very low key to the likes of you and me. Minnows are never much interest to sharks and even though sharks are interesting to minnows, they are not always easily identified as being a shark and often it is too late if you do. How I know these two individuals is really rather irrelevant, it is enough you know that I do.
Mr A in particular, spends more time doing “things” in Crimea, Kyiv, Donetsk and Moscow than Odessa. Mr V is much more homely when it comes to time spent in Odessa. Both are very shrewd, occasionally they work together or recommend each other for different “issues” but for the most part, they act completely independently of each other. Yet they are both part of the same very fluid band of like-minded people.
The days of the family Don or the 1990s mafia boss in the post Soviet space are not as clear cut and identifiable today as they once were. Whilst they may exist, the structure is much more fluid and entrepreneurial for those involved unless there is a need to rally around a cause.
It may seem concerning from a rule of law perspective that both Messers A and V are very well known to all branches of law enforcement and are on good terms with them. That is not as unusual as we may like to think and is not exclusively a “Ukrainian thing”. Many a career criminal in the UK was/is on cordial terms with “the law”. Familiarity when it comes to who you meet regularly in your profession and all that. Such things are never always black and white until circumstances force them to be so, particularly as you climb the tree on either side of the line.
So aside from the Odessa mafia, which other recognisable criminal elements with regional reach are to be found here. Well, last year there was a major shoot-out between some Russian criminals and the police.
Russian and Moldavian criminals (be they of the organised type or of the street) regularly decide on Odessa as a place to go to let the matters calm down in their home nations. Part of the city known as Moldovanka is notorious for accommodating such people.
More recently we have the alleged plotters relating to assassination attempts on Mr Putin basing themselves in Odessa. Irrespective of whether Mr Putin was the target or whether what happened here was spun to his advantage during his electioneering, one Russian and two Chechen’s did manage to blow up an apartment in Odessa with a home made IED.
The PKK are in Odessa and do shake down the resident Turks to fund the PKK back in Turkey.
Organised criminality from China is now apparent at 7KM market. Particularly so with massive illegal currency exchange at a market that works strictly with cash, turns over $millions in a day. It is not in your face, you do need to know who’s who and what’s what, but it is there and it is Chinese run (at least at the coal face) and we are talking about a lot of money.
There is also a small but solid organised criminal fraternity amongst the Georgians, the Albanians and the Armenians in Odessa. One would expect that similar activities amongst the same and other groups exist all over Ukraine. Kherson, for example, has an up and coming reputation for a Korean criminal enterprise from what I have been told.
None of this includes the fluid Slavic brotherhood with Bulgarians, Romanians etc regularly making “arrangements” in Odessa.
Leaving the nationalities aside, there is the small but powerful Jewish community in Odessa who can always find “solutions” for their fellow Jew regardless of the issue posed. My good lady is a Ukrainian Jew. I know.
This is before we consider what is in some cases the organised criminality amongst the agencies of the State. Odessa is home to three very active ports. Odessa, Illychovsk and Yushni. It is not easy to simply wander into any of these docks. Security is fairly tight and is everywhere. The bureaucracy involved to open a container that has legitimately been sent to you containing completely legal contents is immense. And yet……
To put this into perspective however, we are not talking about the issues on a scale that Latin America or the US face. Every nationality of organised criminal I have thus far mentioned and more will be present in the US and operating. The physical human insecurity of massive numbers of murders, kidnappings and carnage that can be seen across Latin America and the Caribbean fortunately does not happen in Ukraine.
As I wrote in yesterday’s post, Ukraine is much more of a transitory logistical hub than the end market for much of the organised criminality that occurs in Ukraine, particularly for external actors and to a lesser extent, of what the internal actors do as well.
However, there is still what is possibly an intangible cost when it comes to human security even if there are not the heaps of bodies associated with trafficking in Mexico or Latin America more generally. There is the social and economic marginalisation of these minority groups who are shaken down to fund the PKK or who are expected to provide a roof over a trafficked human before these unfortunates are moved on again etc. There are the unfortunate women duped into traveling to the EU who end up in the sex industry there. (Yes some are volunteers in the industry and that is a personal choice, but there are those who are not which is the issue.)
Keeping such secrets and automatically reverting to a minority language whenever the law is in sight or could hear, creates a disconnect from integration and an economy and rule of law within the national economy and national rule of law (such as it is). That can only be a strategic weakness when attempts are made to combat serious and organised crime, whatever the ideology for involvement in it.
Ukraine cannot effectively address its own massive every day domestic illicit black economy, so it has a very long way to go before it takes the time and effort to look at that of international/regional serious and organised crime without the robust encouragement of external law enforcement agencies.
To be fair, when that encouragement is there and the intelligence is solid and can be moved upon, Ukraine does actually act competently and aggressively. Whenever an external law enforcement actor assists in one way, shape or form, Ukraine can be relied upon to act. Unfortunately, unless that mountain will come to Mohamed, Mohamed rarely goes to the mountain for want of a better analogy, and little if anything is actually done that relates to actual decisive results otherwise.
It was therefore pleasing to write yesterday’s post and the proactive stance by Ukraine towards Afghanistan post 2014. Unfortunately I am not convinced that domestic action will be as robust or overt as the announcement of Ukrainian continued participation in Afghanistan relating to trafficking.
It is a fairly safe bet more, rather than less, Afghan heroin will be transited through Ukraine heading West come 2014 and beyond, and I doubt there will be an adequate plan or resources within Ukraine to meet that challenge. This is something our UK SOCA man sat behind the ramparts of HM Embassy Kyiv will no doubt have on his future threat assessments.
So, in a nation where North Africa (via a few hours in a boat from Turkey), Central Asia, Russia and the EU all meet, trade and use as a logistical hub, it is unsurprising that serious and organised crime is here and is likely to remain. How Ukraine and the region should address it are thoughts for another day and yet another exceedingly long post.
In the past few days, maybe a week or so, pharmaceuticals, the costs of medicines and quality thereof, have come under the critical eye of the government. It proposes to interfere in the market and drive down the cost of medicines to the public.
To be fair it does have several levers to do so, be it via insisting on generic copies of well known drugs or via the licensing system for Ukraine coercing manufacturers to a lower price amongst that assorted bag. Hopefully not by subsidies the country can’t afford.
All jolly good if you are the person buying medication, and it is another social circus trick to attract the voters before the next election in October. Also a golden opportunity if you are the manufacturer of generic drugs without the need to pass on R&D costs through new products hitting the market.
I have no intention in going into the ethics of generic drugs verses big pharma’s ability to finance future R&D. I don’t work for big pharma but I do occasionally need to buy a drug as most people do. Needless to say, the cheaper the drug the better from the consumer point of view as long as they are safe and they work. Grandma’s secret elixir, GlaxoSmithKlein or generic copy, I have taken them all and care only that they cure my ills.
However, governmental interference is often frowned upon by any market sector it directly affects, concern others thinking of entering a country less they be the next market sector to be subjected to excessive government regulation, and of course those who simply find any form of State capitalism and/or market regulation politically abhorrent. Generally how far left or right of the political centre ground you sit is the guide to how much governmental interference in a market you will accept.
Nobody will complain about improvements of quality control which is about to take a step in the right direction if the Prime Minister is to be believed. What concerns me is this statement from the link above.
“We need to introduce in our country the recognized standards of the independent distribution practice and independent drugstore practice that are applied by all European countries, in the same way as we introduced the European independent practice of medicine production.”
In 10 years of living in Odessa and having visited hundreds of Aptekas (drug stores) during that time, I can honestly say I have not come across one that doesn’t meet European standards. The staff regardless of Apteka have known exactly what they are talking about and given sound advice – every time.
In fact, as there are literally hundreds is not thousands of aptekas in Odessa, competition is huge. Standards are high, most offer loyalty discount cards to retain your custom, (and I have a vast collection of apteka discount cards), and the free market is doing what it is theoretically supposed to do via competition.
There maybe something I am missing. Maybe their procurement procedures are not robust enough to prevent to purchase of counterfeit drugs, but everything I have ever been sold has done exactly what it was supposed to do. Over a decade and I estimate a thousand or more purchases from random aptekas during that time, my personal experience is that they are up to any European standard you want to throw at them.
In fact, given that most useless and misleading political opinion polls in Ukraine are based upon about 1000 – 1200 supposedly random people with a margin of error of 2-3%, my personal apetka survey over decade is equally as legitimate by way of number, randomness and results.
Why, you ask, am I concerned about the above emboldened quote? The answer is simply that with government intervention on price, what seems likely to be unwarranted and critical examination of the apetkas in Ukraine, probably more and not less bureaucracy, and with the existing extremely competitive market, you can envisage a scenario where half will close as the profits or bureaucratic grief will no longer make them viable one way or another.
I accept that any government in any nation has a duty to society and that health, like education, must rank highly amongst those duties (particularly in Europe where they hold high priority amongst the voter base over almost every other issue). I accept there simply must be quality control and a transparent procurement system for those distributing drugs. I can even accept that there are occasions where government simply has to interfere in the markets to ensure access to it by all levels of the society it represents.
What concerns me about this latest government action is that it has not been thought through properly (again) and that the casual effects may bring better prices, but will also vastly reduce the amount of places society can actually buy these drugs when they need them.
Now I may be jumping the gun a little. There may well be a system emerge with a recommended retail price plus x% mark-up on the way, and it could be that x% is enough to keep all aptekas in business. It may be that a move towards a predominantly generic pharmaceutical base will generally work in keeping costs down, if exceptions are made for the latest cutting edge drugs that are far superior to their predecessors is within the model.
It maybe that a centralised procurement system will reduce dramatically counterfeit drugs, or, it may be that such a centralised procurement system will quickly become corrupt and overly bureaucratic. How independent will the independent drug suppliers be? I suspect not very independent and/or under interested party oligarchy control.
Time will tell, but my concerns remain over the government interfering so robustly in an already competitive apteka market and the supply chains they currently have.
OK. I am tired. Late to bed Saturday night due to the tradition of being in Orthodox churches at an ungodly hour for Easter, followed by far too much food, far too much wine and far too much family yesterday, again finishing at an ungodly hour.
I will leave you with this very insightful article on corruption from the Brussels Journal by George Handlery to mull over whilst I try to recover.
Whilst you consider his words on corruption, I will ponder why everything to do with godliness in Ukraine has to happen as such an ungodly hour!
Whilst the government struggles to identify and package up parts of the infamous behemoth called Naftogaz for privatisation as recommended by the EBRD, it seems to be having little difficulty in deciding on other parts of the energy infrastructure to be privatised.
This week a law passed (with 243 votes in favour) toprivatise the CHP plants around the country with a few exceptions.
It will be interesting to see how transparently these assets are sold.
It for weeks I have been meaning to post this and then something else took precedents and now it is almost too late!
Tomorrow, Committee of the Regions of the EU (Bâtiment Jacques Delors, Rue Belliard 99-101, B – 1040 Brussels -
Belgium), 0930 – 1300, the Dnipropetrovsk investment roadshow takes place. (Actually there are some interesting stats within that link,)
The following dignitaries, officials and commentators will grace the event:
•Mr.GerhardSTAHL,Secretary-GeneraloftheCommitteeoftheRegions;
•Mr.KonstantinYELISEEV,RepresentativeofUkrainetotheEU;
•Mr.MiloslavRANSDORF,MemberoftheEuropeanParliament;
•Mr.OleksandrVILKUL,HeadofDnipropetrovskRegionalStateAdministration;
•Mr.YevhenUDOD,HeadofDnipropetrovskRegionalCouncil;
•Mr. AndreyMUKSIMOV, Deputy Head of DnipropetrovskRegional State Administration;
•Mr. AnatoliyKOMIRNOY, Director of the municipal enterprise “DnipropetrovskInvestment Agency”;
•Mr. Anders ASLUND, Senior Researcher of Peterson Institute for International Economics (USA) (tbc);
•Mr. Francois-OLIVIER CAILLEAU, General Director CIS “MaїsadourSemences” (France)
•Moderator: Dr. SILKE TONSHÖFF, Committee of the Regions, Head of Unit
Please note, even if you have no money to invest and/or cannot even pronounce Dnipropetrovsk, that is no reason not to attend. 1130 – 1300 is cocktail time (and I am sure there will be a few nibbles). As many a taxpayer will state, the EU is synonymous with a free lunch and it seems one could be on one offer – with cocktails!
Well, like him or not, and as a character I am not overly fond, but as an administrator he is very good, Prime Minister Azarov is certainly talking the right talk. Obviously there is an election coming up and the talk is of course partially aimed at influencing voters and those in-State actors who can influence voters as well. We should expect nothing less. All sitting governments up for reelection do the same thing.
As he rightly states, “This work is not because we want less work, but because many administrative services are completely unnecessary.” Quite true but only half the issue. Not only is much of it unnecessary, but a lot of it that can be justified is overly complex and never situated in the same place, requiring different documents in a certain order, stamped and signed in a tour–de–bureoucratic organs before returning to your first port of administrative call, for them to conclude the most simple of official documentation matters.
Much of it is simply repetitive when production of document “A” would prove your have already have/done 99% of what is required for the production of document “B”. Why repeat the entire process again?
Far too many administrative State organs have a requirement to be in the mix for simple document production when there is no real justification for them to be part of the process at all.
I am quite sure an academic/NGO study of the Ukrainian administrative model could shrink it by a further 20% over and above any shrinkage already carried out by the government.
Cynically I am also quite sure the government are quite aware of this but want to involve NGOs and civil society in the run up to an election in an effort to get them “on-side” as much as possible. After all, there are numerous neighbouring States that have made the administrative transition from USSR bureaucracy to a more modern administrative system who would be only too pleased to share their experiences with Ukraine.
If it were not an election year, you would suspect that tax-payer funded jollies to these nations to investigate their new administrative systems would have been the preferred governmental methodology.
However, it is an election year, the invitation has been made and any NGO worth the title will actively engage with the government given such an open invitation. A foot in the door and collaboration over this makes it easier to gain access through the same door when pushing other issues the government is not so willing to action.
Let us hope it is an opportunity not only seized by the civil society active in Ukraine, but also the diplomatic missions of those nations with embassies and consulates here as well. Who better to give advice over bureaucracy in other nations and their systems than the bureaucrats from other nations?
Mr Hague, FCO, UK Ambassador to Ukraine and boiler room staff in Kyiv, you all hail from possibly the oldest established civil service in Europe if not on the planet. Choose a subject, for example tax and tax administration, and promote our experience and systems to the government of Ukraine. As much as I dislike paying tax as the next person, our UK system is far easier to cope with than that of Ukraine as a tax payer. I have experience of both.
This must be a golden opportunity to get very friendly with the current Ukrainian government if the UK government chooses to take it.
Go on FCO – I dare you to make a positive difference to every Ukrainian by showing the current Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers a better, more streamlined and efficient way in an administrative area of your choice.
Gauntlet publicly thrown down Mr Hague and chums!
(As an aside, Valeriy Khoroshkovskyi, First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine is in the interrogation seat at Chatham House tonight (1730 – 1830 BST) for a grilling on Ukrainian foreign policy by my esteemed and astute fellow Chatham House members. If he says anything unexpected I’ll let you know over the course of the next few days.)
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