On November 3, with a majority vote the Parliament of Ukraine adopted the Law "On Sea Ports". This law was designed by people deputies from BYuT, SPU and the Party of Regions and passed the first reading back in January 2007. In preparation for the second reading the document undergone certain important changes, it included privatization, concession and lease of port infrastructure possibilities. Unfortunately, due to frequent management changes of the transport ministry the bill wasn’t adopted on second reading. It should be noted that the marine industry has long needed a new legal regulation – the ports were regulated under the Code of merchant shipping, which was adopted in 1995.
In October the unfriendly regulatory climate took the forth position in the ranking of impediments for production growth. The share of managers noting this barrier significantly reduced in October compared to July from 54.5% to 39.6%. At the same time, the importance of excessive taxation increased from 56.9% to 65.8%, coming to the first place in the list of obstacles.
A slowdown of the industrial production growth was observed in the 3rd quarter compared to the 2nd one. However, in the 4th quarter managers of enterprises have plan to slightly increase their production activity
Development of legislation in Ukraine on technical regulation is a priority agenda EU-Ukraine Association, which should contribute to removing barriers to trade between Ukraine and the European Union.
In July, the President signed changes to the Law on Public Procurement (draft law No.7253), which ended a lively discussion of this issue today.
On May 19, 2011, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a new Air Code of Ukraine, which entered into force on September 17. The adopted document offers a new approach to passenger rights, noting specific reasons, terms and compensations for denied boarding, cancellation of flight, long flight delays and lower class of service. Moreover, passengers of charter flights can also be compensated for flight delays.
The draft State Budget for 2012 is based on realistic macroeconomic assumptions. The real GDP growth is assumed at 5.0%, which is by 1.5 p.p. lower than the growth envisaged in the State Program of Social and Economic Development of Ukraine.
On September 15, the Cabinet of Ministers submitted the Draft State Budget Law for 2012 to the Verkhovna Rada. The day before, the Minister of Finance of Ukraine described the Draft as ‘unique’, and so that ‘combines all best practices of budget development in previous years and contains plenty of innovative ideas’. Focusing on revenue part of the Draft budget, we will try to find out whether it is unique.
Production expectations have deteriorated. Value of the Industrial Confidence Indicator decreased by 6 points compared to April. It happened mainly because of deterioration of the production plans of the enterprises for the next 3 months.
Expectations of managers about changes in business environment over the next six months deteriorated. The value of the index of business expectations has decreased to 0.06 in July/August (in April - 0.16).