Last week Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov made his report on the work of government in 2011. In general, he presented everything in positive light and did not forget to remind that the government had to work in difficult external economy situation, when prices on energy resources went up and the cost of the borrowed money increased.
Despite predictions made by some experts of Azarov’s possible resignation as a result of assigning a new person to the position of the minister of finance, current prime minister didn’t make a demarche. However, as was noted by economist Viktor Lysytsky in his interview for The Day, Azarov spoke without his usual enthusiasm and repeatedly called kickers those, who dared to give negative assessment of the public actions of his government and the chosen reformist course.
What concerns the report on the results of government’s economic policy made by Azarov, he didn’t say anything particularly unexpected. The economy is growing, prices are stabilized, inflation is decreasing, Ukraine is not taking IMF credits and won’t do it anytime soon, we are still contemplating on joining the Customs Union, and there will be no unilateral concessions in gas negotiations and Ukrainians won’t give up their national interests. In nearly two hours of press conference the premier spoke about what his government managed to do. One of the main positive aspects is that, according to Azarov, the country managed this year without IMF’s credits.
However, the cooperation with the Fund will not be closed. The format of further cooperation will be determined in the nearest future (meeting is scheduled for January 26, 2012) – the newly appointed Minister of Finance Valerii Khoroshkovsky will go on official visit to conduct negotiations. Even if the IMF refuses Ukraine, it won’t be such a big deal. Ukraine can live without any loans for another year, if shady business could be well shaken for money. It seems that this will be the beginning of the work of new minister of finance on his post. This weekend on one of the TV programs Khoroshkovsky said that the tax service and customs will provide considerable increase in revenues to the State Treasury in 2012. Khoroshkovsky estimated than in 2012 tax service officials should collect 20 billion hryvnias more. “I think that there is a possible reserve of even more than 20 billion hryvnias,” he said in talk show “Big Politics with Yevgeny Kiseliov.” On January 22 it was announced that the government has submitted a bill to the Parliament which will enable the supervisory authorities to carry out inspections of enterprises without prior notice.
“The government continues the wrong practices and has not turned to sensible development of our competitive advantages,” noted to The Day Lysytsky giving his assessment of the report and statements made by prime minister. The expert said that world’s experience shows that the developed countries managed to survive a crisis only thanks to mobilization of their capacities. For Ukraine, in his opinion, such competitive advantages today could be the IT industry and the agricultural sector. It would be sufficient just to introduce systemic changes rather than isolated initiatives that often “contradicted each other” as it was up until now.
However, according to the expert, it would be totally unfair to blame only Azarov or Yanukovych. “The false model of governance was established about 15 years ago. At that time the algorithm for government work was based on a ‘take away and share’ principle. Economic regulation was divided between three parties: tax service, customs, and oligarchs,” said Lysytsky. In his opinion, the Ukrainian government, if it truly intends to defend the national interests of the country in which it operates, in a coordinate system of public finance needs to learn another two simple actions of mathematical literacy – add and multiply.
