The government of Ukraine has approved the composition of a nomination committee made up of five ministers and five independent non-governmental experts headed by the president of the Kyiv School of Economics and former general director of Kraft Foods Ukraine Yurii Lohush, which will select candidates to head the country's largest state companies. The Interfax Ukraine news agency reported this, citing a press release by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.

The state is represented in this committee by Minister of Economic Development and Trade Aivaras Abromavicius, Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Volodymyr Demchyshyn, Minister of Finance Natalie Jaresko, Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Oleksii Pavlenko, and Minister of Infrastructure Andrii Pyvovarskyi.

The other members of the committee are the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s Director for Ukraine Sevki Acuner, the World Bank’s Country Director for Ukraine Qimiao Fan, the International Finance Corporation’s Country Manager for Ukraine and Belarus Rufat Alimardanov, and Ukrainian business ombudsman Algirdas Šemeta, who was European commissioner for budget and financial planning from 2009 to 2010.

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The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade noted that the government recently approved a new procedure for appointing the heads of state companies, according to which candidates to head companies with assets of more than UAH 2 billion or net annual income of more than UAH 1.5 billion must be approved by the Cabinet of Ministers based on representations from the nomination committee. According to preliminary data, there are about 60 such companies.

In turn, the nomination committee will select potential heads of such companies from candidates proposed to it by the relevant ministries, which will hold their own competitions. Previously, Abromavicius said that only the state owned about 1,900 companies and that the revenues of 60% of them were less than EUR 1 million. According to him, the heads of most of them will be selected by independent transparent commissions at the ministerial level.

The Ministry of Infrastructure established the first such commission, including in it experts from the Talent Advisors, EBS, and Deloitte companies. "At this stage, we will create such commissions in all ministries, if they want to change the management of a company," stressed the head of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.

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According to Abromavicius, commissions will conduct initial screenings at the ministerial level and recommend 2-5 of the best candidates to the nomination committee. Out of these, the committee will select a single candidate, who it will recommend to the Cabinet of Ministers for appointment.

At the same time, according to him, there is no guarantee that the government will approve this candidate.

According to forecasts by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, candidates for the posts of heads of Ukrzaliznytsia, the Boryspil airport, and the Lviv airport may the first to be considered by the nomination committee because the competitions for these posts were the first to be announced.