Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman signed a Cabinet of Ministers resolution No. 367 entitled "Certain Issues involving Deregulation of Economic Activities," which amends 16 other Cabinet of Ministers resolutions, on April 26.
The relevant information was published on the government portal, the CFTS portal reports.
"The Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers has made amendments to certain resolutions to abolish excessive administrative procedures that complicate business activities, as well as to bring the subordinate legal acts in line with the laws of Ukraine and Ukraine’s international legal obligations," the government said.
This was one of the most awaited decisions in the maritime sector because it is intended to cover some legislative gaps in this sector. One of these is the procedure for regulating the discharge of ballast water by the State Environmental Inspectorate’s marine environmental inspectors.
The Cabinet of Ministers resolution provides for abolition of regulation of ships’ segregated ballast water and requires coordination of the transfer technology for each type of cargo with the State Environmental Inspectorate’s marine environmental inspectorates.
It also brings the procedures for detecting discharges of pollutants from ships in line with the requirements of the MARPOL 73/78 Convention.
In addition, the resolution stipulates that the State Environmental Inspectorate cannot inspect ballast water on ships until a new procedure enters into force.
According to preliminary estimates by representatives of the maritime business community, the non-regulation of these activities by the State Environmental Inspectorate has resulted in ship downtime in seaports in the past 16 months, resulting in lost GDP, state revenues, and business income totaling up to USD 200 million annually.
As the CFTS portal reported earlier, representatives of maritime businesses have accused environmental inspectors of repeatedly abusing their powers because of the failure to harmonize the provisions of the Ukrainian legislation.
The parliament adopted the draft law No. 7010, which is aimed at resolving the issue of environmental inspections in ports, in September last year. However, the issue of regulation of ballast water remained unresolved.
