Volodymyr Klychko, Head of the Kyiv City State Administration and Oleksiy Reznikov, Head of the Kyiv Council took part in the roundtable, where the roadmap was presented.
Volodymyr Bondarenko, Head of the Kyiv City State Administration took an active part in the discussion of the roadmap during the roundtable.: “There is no one sphere in the Kyiv City economy that was not affected by corruption”: he emphasized - “No serious changes have happened. On the contrary, a reverse has process started recently: returning to the schemes that exised before.” The roadmap was discussed by members of Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, members of the Kyiv City Council, civil activists and experts, in particular, by Kseniya Liapina, Yuriy Levchenko, Ivan Saliy, Oleksandr Sergienko, Sergiy Dorotych, Pavlo Moskalenko and others.
According to estimates of experts of the Open Society Foundation that conduct civil monitoring and expertise of the Kyiv City budget policy during the last 5 years, proper prevention of corruption risks in taxation of individuals income and payment for land can bring from UAH 19-52 bln or USD 1.6-4.5 bln to the City Budget. Average City budget is USD 1.8-2.0 bln now, that is 16 times less city budget of Berlin and twice less than the budget of Warsaw.
Proper administering of payment for communal land, which is the most expensive in Ukraine, may bring from UAH 14-42 bln to the City budget. Taking out taxation of individuals income from shadow can give UAH 5-10 bln. Additional funds may be received by prevention of corruption risks in budget procurement, optimization of communal enterprises work, leasing or sale of the City property that is not used effectively, etc.
Kseniya Liapina, Member of Verkhovna Rada, noticed: “The land issue will always be the most sensitive both from the budget point of view and from socio-cultural development of the City, development of industry and entrepreneurship point of view. Burdening of entrepreneurs with extremely high taxes will lead to non-collection of Tax in Individuals Income. Therefore it is important that all decisions were balanced.”
Ivan Sikora, Director of the Open Society Foundation indicated importance of cardinal changes and discussed in detail the existing corruption risks and reserves to double income of the City budget, when presenting the roadmap. Lesya Shevchenko, President of the Foundation, presented an easily understood visual City Budget of Kyiv, that was developed by the Open Society Foundation. http://osf.org.ua/public-finance-budget-kyiv
The roadmap for the City authorities includes a package of proposals in the area of budget and anti-corruption policy, administering of taxes and city target programs, management of communal property and work of communal enterprises, in the are of energy efficiency, small and medium entrepreneurship and management of the City debt obligations, etc., abstract of the roadmap and the text of Open Address that is based on the theses of the roadmap.
The event was held in the framework of the project “Transparent and Open Budget of Kyiv as a Step to effective spending of Public Funds”, that is realized by the Open Society Foundation with support from the International Renaissance Foundation.
Proposals to the text of the Open Address and concise substantiation as well as indicating of the author’s name and organization are collected at email address osf55@ukr.net till 10AM, 27 June 2014.
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Ukrainian Analytical Center Open Society Foundation
Public policy:
- Monitoring of parliamentary parties for 11 years
- Anti-corruption policy on the central and local levels
- Conflict of interest on public service
Public finance:
- Analysis of the national and local budgets (with a focus on the largest local budget of Ukraine: the Kyiv City budget)
- Analysis of local target programs in Kyiv with a focus on small and medium entrepreneurship.
