The committee that the Cabinet of Ministers set up to select to appoint the heads of state companies was unable to select the new head of the State Railway Administration (Ukrzaliznytsia) on February 23 and decided to consider the long-list of candidates for the post. The committee’s head Yurii Lohush announced this at a news briefing at the Cabinet of Ministers in Kiev on Tuesday, the Interfax Ukraine news agency reports.

Andrii Bullakh, a managing partner at Deloitte, told the news briefing that candidates for this position initially submitted 233 CVs, from which a long list of 11 candidates was compiled.

According to Ukraine’s Minister of Infrastructure Andrii Pyvovarskyi, a list of three candidates was later compiled during interviews and assessment, and this list was submitted to the nomination committee on February 23.

However, according to Lohush, considering the fact that this is the first experience of such selection and understanding the importance of appointment of the head of Ukrzaliznytsia, the nomination committee decided to consider the entire longlist of 11 candidates.

The next meeting of the nomination committee, which will focus on selection of the head of Ukrzaliznytsia, will be held on Monday, 2 March.

As reported earlier, the The Ministry of Infrastructure announced the final list of candidates in the competition for the post of general director of Ukrzaliznytsia on 23 February. The list included Dina Nemyrovich, the financial director and director of strategy at the Farmak company; Yevhen Romaschin, the general director of the Corum Group; Daniel Valk, the general director of North American Interpipe (Houston, United States) until October 2014.

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. Ministries compile initial longlists of candidates with the participation of experts.