News

Expert Panel Discussion of the Legislative Draft
20 April 2016
Expert Panel Discussion of the Legislative Draft
   On 19 April, representatives of the Municipal Finance Strengthening Initiative Roll-out (MFSI-II) Project took part in an expert panel discussion of the bill "On Disclosure of Information in Extractive Industries". The event was organized by the Chamber of Tax Consultants NGO, which is a sub-grantee of the MFSI-II in respect of implementation of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in Ukraine.
   The panel discussion participants included Chairman of the EITI National Secretariat, Dina Narezhnieva, Director of the Economic and Finance Department at the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry, Olena Diachenko, Program Manager of the DiXi Group NGO, Roman Nitsovych, a representative from the State Fiscal Service, Oleksandr Shumskyi, representatives from the Chamber of Tax Consultants, and MFSI-II experts.
   The event participants discussed the draft law proposed to be submitted for consideration of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. They noted that this legislative draft differs significantly from the version, which had been discussed and edited during the last two months. Mr. Shumskyi told the audience about the specifics of the State system of collection and processing of information from extractive industries and the opportunities for optimization and simplification through opening up of appropriate resources by the State Service of Geology and Subsoil Resources.
   The participants were also familiarized with implementation of EITI in Ukraine in 2015 and this year's innovations. Among other things, the MFSI-II experts provided clarification regarding a new EITI standard for submitting proposals on settling disputes and problem resolution based on the analysis of reports for the previous period.
   An invited expert, Rieder Boris told about the specifics of EITI in Germany. In turn, representatives of the Chamber of Tax Consultants shared their information about implementation of EITI in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, and Norway.
   Wrapping up and summarizing the discussion, the participants agreed that all the stakeholders should submit their proposals for the legislative draft "On Disclosure of Information in Extractive Industries" in electronic format to the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry.