A pilot project has been launched in Ukraine through a joint working group consisting of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, the State Property Fund of Ukraine, and the Fund for Innovations and Development (the Republic of Georgia) for the privatization of State-owned agricultural enterprises, according to an announcement on the official website of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy of Ukraine.

 

Ten state-owned enterprises involved in livestock and crop production, and horse breeding have been selected to participate in the program. One of the selected operations, Agricultural Enterprise Trest, has completed the pre-privatization requirements and has been transferred to the management of its regional branch of the State Property Fund.

 

“We choose different enterprise purposefully, with a point of specialization, arrangement and privatization mechanisms, which can be used,”said Oleksiy Zubryckyi, the Deputy Chairman of the working group on privatization of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy. “A part of them will be divided on shares, the others will be privatized and the property of others will be sold at an auction sale. The joint goal is to work out mechanisms for each of them, to coordinate actions and to apply the successful experience of our Georgian partners on practice”.

 

A total of 571 state-owned enterprises in the country are under the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, however, only 96 are officially operating and only 20 are profitable, while 154 enterprises are bankrupt or are in the process of liquidating. A total of 177 state-owned enterprises are being prohibited from privatizing, with 18 of those being in the Crimea.

 

In addition to the ten enterprises taking part in the pilot program, the ministry is planning to initiate privatization proceedings on 254 additional enterprises according to Oleksiy Pavlenko, the Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine. One hundred and one of the operations being privatized will be through land plot rearrangement, while 158 of the enterprises will be subject to further privatization actions. The fruition of these plans will leave a maximum of ten agricultural enterprises on the ministry books.

 

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