Ukraine's parliament passes bill to allow private companies in space industry

Ukraine's parliament has passed a bill in its second reading and as a whole to allow private companies to operate in the space industry.

Some 308 lawmakers voted for the adoption of the draft law on amendments to certain legislative acts of Ukraine regarding state regulation of space activities (No. 1071) with the required minimum of 226 votes.

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As head of the parliament's committee on economic development Dmytro Natalukha noted, the bill aims to ensure that the "domestic space industry has a future," and this requires injections of private capital. "The bill is designed to ensure the future of Ukrainian space, to demonopolize, to cancel licensing, to remove bans and bureaucratic obstacles to the development of Ukrainian space," he said.

According to the MP, after the bill passed its first reading, the committee received 22 amendments, of which 17 were taken into account, and the remaining ones were rejected.

When discussing the bill before its adoption in the first reading, it was stated that it would abolish the state monopoly on activities in the space industry, exclude licensing of such activities, eliminate the need for permission for business entities to conduct independent negotiations, and regulates other issues.

UNIAN memo. In the first half of 2019, enterprises of Ukraine's space industry produced commodities worth more than UAH 2.08 billion, or about US$83 million. Almost 80% of the commodities of the space industry in Ukraine are sold for export, since the government is currently unable to ensure full workload of domestic enterprises' production facilities at the expense of budget funds.