The government plans to reduce the number of state-owned companies by 30 times

The Ukrainian government plans to reduce the number of state-owned companies from over 3,000 to 100 in order to make them more efficient and reduce budget costs.

First Deputy Prime Minister-Minister of Economy Yuliia Svyrydenko reported this in a column for Interfax-Ukraine.

According to her, the new policy on state ownership provides for the optimization of the portfolio of state assets through triage — all state companies will be analyzed and divided into categories: those that remain in state ownership, those that are subject to privatization, and those that will be liquidated.

«The government plans to reduce the number of state-owned companies to about a hundred, instead of over three thousand that exist today. The goal of this optimization is to increase the efficiency of state-owned companies, increase their contribution to the economy, and reduce the state budget's maintenance costs,» she said.

Some companies will remain in state ownership if they are important to the national interest or provide essential services.

«This can be the satisfaction of public needs in certain services (Guaranteed buyer), the provision of national interests (Energoatom, Ukroboronprom), the provision of an affordable level of prices (Ukrposhta, Ukrzaliznytsia), belonging to natural monopolies (Ukrenergo), etc.,» the First Deputy Prime Minister gave examples.

In addition, new rules have been introduced for supervisory boards and the remuneration of their members. The dividend policy is also changing — during the war, state-owned companies must pay 75% of profits, and after the war, dividends will depend on the efficiency of the company and its investments.

We will remind you that the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine plans to reduce the number of higher education institutions to about 100, although before the consolidation there were about 130 of them.