Ukrainian Business Council Held Its First Meeting With the World Bank on the National Revenue Strategy of Ukraine

On January 25th, Mariia Shevchuk—a UBC member representing the IT Ukraine Association—took part in discussing the National Revenue Strategy (NSD) of Ukraine.

 

The fundamental quality of Ukrainian institutions is significantly different from the one that Eastern European countries had at the start of their respective EU accession processes, which poses a historic challenge for Ukraine.

 

The World Bank experts emphasised the need to implement European directives, bringing both legislative and regulatory acts—including the tax policy—in line with European standards. Bringing down and eliminating corruption, upholding the rule of law, and ensuring fair governance are essential for Ukraine’s future.

 

IT Ukraine’s CEO Mariia Shevchuk stressed that the Strategy does not account for the business interests, key priorities among which are taxation transparency, increasing Ukraine’s competitiveness in the global market, and so on. Instead, the Strategy in its current form encompasses a complex and costly regulatory approach, precisely due to which it’s imperative that the changes in the NSD implementation plan are made.

 

Making the market European-esque ensures fairness and competitiveness. There are also tools and metrics—recognised and accepted globally, as they can be verified—for assessing the quality of governance. Among such are The Worldwide Governance Indicators. By drawing on international experiences and following the Strategy as provisioned—as a roadmap—building an effective relationship between the state and businesses becomes feasible.

 

Concluding the meeting, the parties agreed to reconvene regularly, cooperating on providing the recommendations for the NSD implementation, particularly bearing in mind the IT market specifics.