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Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers has prepared bill No. 2488а on amendments to some laws of Ukraine related to maritime transport facilities, suggesting that 13 Ukrainian merchant seaports be excluded from the list of state-owned assets that are not subject to privatization.
A respective bill was registered in the Verkhovna Rada on August 10, 2015.
The Ukrainian government also proposes excluding the national freight and passenger carrier in the basin of the Danube river, the Ukrainian Danube Shipping Company, the State industrial and operational administration of sea routes in the Azov-Black Sea basin, the Black Sea General Shipping Agency INFLOT, the Southern Naval Research & Design Institute, from the list of state-owned assets not subject to privatization.
"The bill aims at introducing a competitive procedure for selling property of enterprises; protection of enterprises excluded from the list from non-privatization liquidation procedures and disposition of their property, in particular, when initiating bankruptcy procedure," an explanatory note to the bill reads.
The bill provides for the suspension of bankruptcy proceedings with regard to those entities, and a moratorium on initiation of bankruptcy proceedings within three years. At the same time, these provisions are not applicable to state-owned property that is liquidated by the decision of the owner, as noted in the document.
Moreover, it is noted that the exclusion of maritime transport entities from the list of entities not subject to privatization does not mean the elimination of state ownership of the property, but will allow for improving the quality of management, restructuring of enterprises, concentration of core assets, as well as attraction of investors and business partners.
Ensuring national security, the bill provides for supplementing the law on the privatization of state property with provisions that bar individuals legal persons from a state recognized by the Verkhovna Rada as the aggressor state, as well as individuals or legal entities that are included in the list of entities involved in terrorist activity or under international sanctions, from bidding for facilities offered for privatization.
In case of sale of the facilities to such persons or entities, the assets shall be returned to state ownership without compensation.
It is reported that the bill has been approved without any remarks by the Ministry of Infrastructure, Finance Ministry and the State Property Fund of Ukraine, as well as by the Justice Ministry of Ukraine with some remarks.
As UNIAN reported earlier, the Cabinet of Ministers in May this year approved privatization of about 300 entities, including Ukrainian merchant seaports, in 2015 as part of the large-scale privatization of state-owned assets in Ukraine.
The government also instructed the State Property Fund to ensure putting those entities up for sale in 2015 through an open bidding based on the auction principle without restrictions on bidders' access, except as required by law, and except for those being subject to the sanctions. However, the document has not yet been adopted.
Earlier, Infrastructure Minister Andriy Pyvovarsky noted that the ministry was considering exclusion of ports from the list of strategic enterprises to make them objects of public-private partnerships or any other form of cooperation.
According to Deputy Infrastructure Minister Yuriy Vaskov who is in charge of the maritime infrastructure, strategic assets of Ukrainian merchant seaports should remain in state ownership, while the rest of the property may be transferred to concession or be privatized.
In 2014, Ukrainian seaports boosted cargo handling by 4% year-over-year to 142.79 million tonnes, of which state-owned stevedoring companies handled 48.63 million tonnes of cargo, which was less by 3.3% than in 2013. Private stevedoring companies handled 94.16 million tonnes, which was 8.3% up year-over-year.