The illegal (shadow) economy accounts for almost 50% of today’s total Ukrainian economy. The process of creating the shadow sector is caused primarily by excessive tax pressure from the state. These are the not quite unexpected results of a poll of civil servants and entrepreneurs conducted in December-January by the Intellectual Initiative Charitable Foundation and the Institute of Sociology of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences in five regions.
Most respondents are convinced so much shadow criminalizes the state, reduces tax revenues, and does not promote social programs. True, it also creates jobs and is a means of survival for our citizens. As viewed by the respondents, most susceptible to corruption in Ukraine are the traffic police, customs, ordinary police, tax inspection, higher educational institutions (the bureaucrats believe), and administrative bodies (as most businessmen claim). The latter, incidentally, admit they are subjected to an average 13 inspections throughout the year by various supervisory bodies (the visit of fireman or a public hygiene inspector costs an average of 183 hryvnias).
Those polled believe that the government should take the following measures to combat corruption: cancel the immunity of judges and lawmakers on all levels, carry out radical tax reform, to make officials personally liable for unlawful acts, and raise their salaries. Incidentally, Russian civil servants have admitted they will be content with a salary of $1,500 enough not to take bribes, while traffic policemen in the hinterland could make do with $2,500. Meanwhile, as The Day was told by the chairman of the All-Ukrainian Coordination Bureau for Criminological Research, Professor Anatoly Zakaliuk, that Ukrainian corruption had already been studied in depth as if with an x-ray: seven comprehensive scholarly research projects have been carried out and a basic concept of corruption control worked out and approved by presidential decree nearly two years ago. However, the task of its implementation was assigned to the Cabinet of Ministers, i.e., to state bureaucrats, so the professor thinks only 15% of the planned anti-corruption measures have actually been carried out.
