KIEV — From a wood-panel office overlooking Kiev’s Victory Avenue, Andriy Pyvovarsky, a former chief executive turned government reformer, earns $300 a month to manage a vast ministry more reminiscent of a “holding company.”
The Ministry of Infrastructure’s bloated portfolio of almost 300 state-owned enterprises, including a railroad, seaports and roads, funnel cash to corrupt businessmen with connections to Ukraine’s parliament, he says. For months, they have blocked his attempts to privatize them.
“This is an existential issue for the deputies,” meaning members of parliament, Pyvovarsky said in an interview this month. “If the state-owned companies suddenly disappear, if they’re privately owned, then what’s in it for them? They cannot skim from those companies anymore.”
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WNU Editor: I would say it is worst today. What infuriates me is how the oligarchs .... being the only ones who have money .... are buying assets that are literally being sold by desperate buyers for pennies on the dollar. Foreigners are also getting into the game .... primarily Ukrainian expats in Canada and the U.S., who are buying choice real estate .... while at the same time accusing Russia for the dire straits that Ukraine finds itself in today. Regular readers of this blog know that I have family in Ukraine ... and they are in the real estate business. To say times are tough is an understatement .... and while they will survive, many of their competitors and colleagues have already thrown in the towel.
Privatization is the goal of neo-liberals.
ReplyDeleteWash Post
At stake are billions of dollars, much of it siphoned from state-owned enterprises, and interests that allegedly extend to Ukraine’s leadership, including business circles close to both President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk....The West’s influence on the government in Kiev cannot be overstated. Ukraine needs Western financial support, including the remainder of a $17.5 billion International Monetary Fund bailout, to prop up its economy. IMF head Christine Lagarde threatened this month to cut off aid “without a substantial new effort to invigorate governance reforms and fight corruption.”
Michael Hudson
Dismemberment usually is achieved most easily in today’s world under the force majeur of IMF “stabilization” such as tore Yugoslavia apart (an early venture of Jeffrey Sachs). The aim is to break away as much of Ukraine as possible from the Russian orbit, and to do so in ways designed to hurt Russia the most. This entails refusal to pay for gas arrears, and stopping Ukrainian military exports to Russia. IMF and EU-sponsored austerity would lead to deeper dependency on Western Europe for credit that a bankrupt Ukraine, driven into even deeper unemployment, could not pay. The IMF-EU then would insist that its government must pay Western creditors by proceeds from privatization sell-offs. The problem with this is that most Ukrainian debt is owed to Russia – not only for gas but also for other Russian claims including a reimbursement of Russian prepayment for its Crimean naval base.