Odesa Regional Administration Head Mikheil Saakashvili, former Forbes Ukraine editor-in-chief Vladimir Fedorin, presidential representative at the Cabinet of Ministers Oleksandr Danyliuk and Vice-President of Kyiv Economy School Yulia Tychkivska have set up the charitable fund Kakha Bendukidze Free Economy Center.
“Our aim is to develop the Center into the leading think tank in Ukraine, which promotes necessary reforms without unnecessary politicizing – Kakha’s style. Personally I, honestly, feel annoyed to see the decisions, which were developed by our team long ago, are chewed for months and can’t be implemented anyway,” Danyliuk wrote on Facebook, commenting on the creation of the new center.
Though Danyliuk and Saakashvili are government officials, they still can be founders of the think-tank as it is a charitable non-profit organization, the president’s representative said.
In addition to the founders, who were friends with Kakha Bendukidze, many other experts, including former Georgian Justice Minister Zurab Adeishvili and expert on state finances Serhiy Marchenko also participate in the initiative. The formal presentation of the center is scheduled for late August-early September.
“I remain the active member of the team of the president and in the new structure of the Administration of the President of Ukraine I will be responsible for the whole economic bloc. And Kakha Bendukidze Center will actively help us, I’m sure, it will criticize our mistakes or delays,” Danyliuk said.
The newly created center is actively involved in the development of Odesa Package of Reforms together with the team of Odesa regional administration head Mikheil Saakashvili, Fedorin wrote in his blog.
According to the data in the state register, the charitable organization Charitable Fund Kakha Bendukidze Free Economy Center was registered in the middle of July 2015 on Kyiv. Its director is Anton Yaschenko, who for a long time worked as a coordinator on economic reforms implementation at the Coordination Center on Reforms Implementation under the President of Ukraine, which was founded in 2010 and chaired by Danyliuk.
As reported, in the second half of May, a similar think tank – the nongovernmental organization Center for Economic Strategy – was created by former Deputy Prime Minister of Slovakia Ivan Miklos, head of Dragon Capital investment company, President of the European Business Association Tomas Fiala and famous musician Svyatoslav Vakarchuk. Hlib Vyshlinsky, who was deputy director of GfK Ukraine and from 1997 to 2003 was project head, senior economist, and subsequently deputy director of the International Center for Policy Studies (ICPS), heads the organization.
The Center for Economic Strategy NGO became part of the expert group at the Economic Development and Trade Ministry to draw up an economic development strategy for Ukraine for the coming ten years, which is headed by Miklos, who acts as advisor to Finance Minister of Ukraine Natalie Jaresko and Ukrainian Economic Development and Trade Minister Aivaras Abromavicius.
