The Verkhovna Rada Committee on Industrial Policy and Entrepreneurship along with the Modern Politician Academy project hosted another round of the public discussion of the draft law No. 2142a "On large-scale export expansion of Ukrainian producers through insurance, guarantees and cheapening of export crediting."
The legislative initiative offered by Oleh Liashko and Viktor Halasiuk envisions the establishment of the Export-Credit Agency and has already been supported by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in first reading. Currently the draft law is being actively discussed by the public and experts to prepare the document for second reading and later adoption in principle.
"The major goal of the draft law is to raise institutional element of the economic policy, creation of real mechanism of promotion of non-resource Ukrainian products in the external markets. The major functions of the Export-Credit Agency is to insure foreign economic agreements, export loans and direct investments from Ukraine, as well as to provide guarantees and partially compensate interest income on export loans," Chairperson of the Committee / people's deputy of the Radical Party of Oleh Liashko Viktor Halasiuk said.
"This is a real revolution in the export sector of Ukraine despite the fact that this is an old well-known practice for the rest of the world," the people's deputy said having added that the draft law had been elaborated with the participation of leading experts and experience of PWC, CMD-Ukraine, Economic Development and Trade Ministry of Ukraine, Kyiv-based Ukrainian Export-Import Bank (Ukreximbank), and foreign institutions.
It is expected that the establishment of the said agency will facilitate solving the problem of critical reduction of the volumes of exportation in the country and simplification of the export basket, as, according to Halasiuk, the commodity export fell from USD 69 billion in 2012 to USD 38 billion in 2015. He noted that only in 2015, Ukraine lost USD 16 billion of its exports earnings, of which USD 4 billion was the loss from exportation to the European Union.
"The liberalization of international trade is not enough as it is just a chance for us if we have powerful institutions and own economic policy," Halasiuk said.