The government has made it mandatory for state-owned companies to publish their financial statements, Minister of Economic Development and Trade Aivaras Abromavicius has announced, the Interfax Ukraine news agency reports.
"We adopted a resolution aimed at ensuring transparency of public companies at a meeting of a government committee on Friday because nobody is even required to publish its reports at the moment. We are changing everything with this resolution," he told reporters after a meeting of the National Council on Reforms.
According to Abromavicius, the financial statements of all state-owned companies will be published in an accessible form on the websites of the companies on the website of the relevant ministry. In addition, a standard will be introduced for publishing such statements, after which the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade will prepare an annual report on state-owned companies based on all these data…" he said.
According to the minister, more than half of the state-owned companies in the leading 100 companies currently make losses, only 20% are audited, and only 15% have supervisory boards. "Here, corporate governance standards are almost entirely absent. Those who manage and have an impact on the company have a different quality of information than the owners - the state," said Abromavicius.
In addition, according to him, dividends from state-owned companies currently account for only 0.2% of Ukraine’s GDP, but this the figure is much higher in other countries. "This does not mean that companies are bad. It simply means that they are managed in the interests of someone else and not the state," said the minister.
Abromavicius added that the procedure for appointing auditors for state-owned companies would be changed with the aim of avoiding a situation in which unknown companies audit major state companies.
