The policy papers are the joint product of the German Advisory Group for Economic Reforms in Ukraine and the IER aimed at providing economic policy recommendations to Ukraine’s policy makers. The recommendations are based on the careful analysis of Ukraine’s situation, state-of-the-art economic theory, and best international practices. The papers are available for policy makers and – with some time lag – for general public.
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Die Ukraine als Nachbar der EU blickt mit besonderem Interesse nach Europa. Dies gilt auch für die Gemeinsame Agrarpolitik (GAP) der EU. Als Reaktion auf die Anfrage des Ministeriums für Agrarpolitik der Ukraine an die Deutsche Botschaft vom 12. Oktober 2005 ist es Ziel der folgenden Darstellungen, die Förderung der Landwirtschaft in Deutschland und der EU kurz und transparent darzustellen, aktuelle Reformen von besonderem Interesse zu präsentieren sowie mögliche Implikationen für die Formulierung und Gestaltung der ukrainischen Agrarpolitik abzuleiten.
In recent years, bank loans expanded rapidly in Ukraine. Regulatory capital of banks has also increased, but at a much lower pace. As a result, the capital adequacy ratio (CAR) for the aggregated banking sector dropped significantly and stood at 14.8% as of September 2005. The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) does not publish information regarding CARs for different groups of banks.
Ukraine's banking sector consists of around 160 commercial banks, most of them being rather small. According to a widespread view, this market structure is not a healthy one, as it implies high risks for the stability of the banking sector. Supporters of this view favor a consolidation in the banking sector by means of raising minimum capital requirements. In line with this way of thinking, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) decided in 2001 to raise minimum capital requirements from EUR 5 m to EUR 8 m in several steps over the period 2003 to 2007. Currently, an increase up to EUR 10 m is under discussion.
Development of rural non-farm employment (RNFE) opportunities is widely recognised to be a pillar of rural development policy and critical factor for providing rural employment and income in the long-term perspective.
Unprofitable frame conditions in Ukraine’s utilities sector, frequent political interventions into price setting as well as the lack of strong political will to implement structural reforms diminish significantly the attractiveness of the sector for investments. To solve these problems it is necessary to ensure transparent and reliable conditions for economic activities in the sector. Ukrainian policy makers have increasingly realized that this can best be achieved by introducing an independent regulatory scheme. The construction of an appropriate regulatory scheme is not a trivial task. In fact, answering the question of “how to regulate?” appears to be much more important than solving the issue of “who regulates?”, on which the current political debate tends to focus.
Ukraine lacks an efficient health care sector and developed voluntary private health insurance. Much of the reform debate is dedicated to introduce a compulsory state medical insurance.
Following international trends to integrate financial sector supervision authorities, Ukraine considers the possibility of integrating two supervisory authorities, the State Commission for the Regulation of Financial Markets and the State Commission for Securities and the Stock Market. While we agree in principle that an integration of supervision has some appeal, we do not expect any positive effect in the case of Ukraine.
Recent weeks have witnessed a series of agricultural policy decisions and pronouncements in Ukraine that have shocked and disappointed those who hoped that the new, post-orange-revolution Government would accelerate the economic reform process and Ukraine’s transition towards full membership in the world agricultural trading community. In the following we first consider recent policy developments on meat and grain markets, which represent the two most important examples of this disturbing turn of events.
The current Ukrainian health care system is highly inefficient and delivers dismal results. The present structure of health care is heavily based on most expensive health care providers – namely hospitals and specialists.