President's Office creating favorable conditions for SMEs – Yermak

Chief of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak says the creation of favorable conditions for the development of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) is one of the major tasks the President's Office systematically works on. That is according to Yermak's op-ed in Ukraine's Novoye Vremya (NV) weekly published on March 24. Ukraine, he says, passed the crisis year 2020 with less loss, including in the entrepreneurship sector, than a number of other countries. "A partial unemployment bailout program has supported 365,000 SME employees and individual entrepreneurs, saving their jobs. Individual entrepreneurs and farmers were partially exempt from paying taxes, fines, and rent for state or municipal property for the quarantine period. The program of one-time relief aid for individual entrepreneurs and employees, who had received UAH 8,000 (US$287.05) per capita before the lockdown, was successfully implemented. It covered over half a million people," he said. The government is currently working on a new package of programs to stimulate economic growth in 2021 and 2022. In particular, the President's Office drew attention to the entrepreneurs' complaints against customs and tax officials. New reforms are moving towards increasing automation and reducing the human factor in the economic activity. "The [online] consulting platform 'Diia.Business' allows you to get a considerable amount of useful information. Some 500,000 people have already visited this portal, while 400,000 have opened personal accounts. The online service 'Diia' makes it possible to quickly register a new business. Half of individual entrepreneurs in 2020 opened their businesses via 'Diia.' It is planned to remove a human factor from the registration procedure in the future at all," he added. The government's another goal is to boost exports 2.5 times by 2030, to US$150 billion a year. Also, it is planned to greatly increase the scale of lending, insurance and guarantee in Ukraine's exports, including via the Export Credit Agency (ECA), which launched operations in full last year. "Last year, the President created the Council for the Promotion of Small Business Development to systematically support small-scale businesses. Ad hoc groups were set up in every region involving different business members. Their task is to constantly communicate with government representatives and hammer out joint solutions to challenges faced by small- and micro-sized businesses, which have so far found it more difficult to get united and reach out high-ranking officials," Yermak summed up.

President's Office creating favorable conditions for SMEs – Yermak

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