Small-scale privatization to bring $1.3 million in first half of 2021

Published July 6, 2021 at 3:28 pm

A view shows the entrance to a dining hall at the Irpin Penal Center outside Kiev on August 6, 2020. - Ukrainian justice ministry on August 6 begun a drive to sell off its prisons, an ambitious project meant to help finance new jails for the country's aging penitentiary system. Over the next 10 years the justice ministry plans to sell about a hundred prisons. The Irpin Penal Center was the first lot in the auction that will start in the coming weeks. Ukraine's penal system discontinued use of the jail a year ago and more than 120 of its residents were relocated to other jails, Leonid Parkhomchuk, the center's acting head, told AFP. (Photo by GENYA SAVILOV / AFP)

Photo by AFP

The State Property Fund expects to have sold Hr 1.67 billion ($1.3 million) worth of assets in small-scale privatization auctions in the first half of 2021, the state agency reported on Facebook on July 6.

The expected revenue is four times the amount received in the same period last year.

Starting prices of assets up for small-scale privatization have grown by an average of 118.5% since last year, according to the fund. In 2019, growth in starting prices was near-nonexistent at 1.6%.

In 2018, then-President Petro Poroshenko signed a law on privatization of small-scale businesses intended to help sell off more than 3,000 state-owned companies, many of which were inefficient cash cows for corruption, to improve management and bring in revenue to the state budget.

In 2020, lawmakers also voted to unblock large-scale privatization in the country, opening the way to the long-awaited sale of large public assets to private companies.

Auctions are public and conducted through ProZorro.Sale, a transparent electronic auction platform.