Large-scale privatization fails in 2020 over coronacrisis, PM says

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has said a large-scale privatization campaign has not been implemented in 2020 over the COVID-19 pandemic.

"A decision was made at the beginning of the year, since the onset of the pandemic, investors have restrictions on movement, actions, etc. In addition, there's economic crisis, we were worried that prices would fall both for real estate and large privatization objects," the Ekonomichna Pravda media outlet quoted Shmyhal as saying.

"Besides, such objects require major preparation since there is a lot of inconsistent documentation around them, court rulings, disputes, etc. The State Property Fund is now engaged in addressing this," he said, answering a question on why there was no large-scale privatization this year, except for the exemplary sale of Kyiv-based Dnipro Hotel.

"Dnipro Hotel was the best option, it had perfectly clean documents, it could be put up quickly. It was a kind of a test pf how the market would react. Despite the fact that Dnipro Hotel was not an object of the large privatization campaign. It is a small privatization object, which, however, was sold at a price higher than that of some large objects," the prime minister said.

Read alsoDefense ministry intends to liquidate almost 50 SOEs"A gas field was put up, and we managed to attract UAH 650 million (US$23.2 million) at an auction instead of the expected UAH 400 million (US$14.3 million). These examples showed the coronavirus doesn't affect privatization. Therefore, we carried out the privatization of a number of distilling plants," Shmyhal said.

"Next year we are preparing six large privatization projects and about 30 medium-scale SOEs. Several hundreds of such 'small' objects as distilling plants are being prepared. Next year, we expect to attract UAH 12 billion (US$428 million) from privatization," he added.