The Law “On Ensuring Transparency in the Extractive Industries” is adopted

On 18 September, the Law “On Ensuring Transparency in the Extractive Industries” was adopted at the morning session of the Verkhovna Rada in the second reading. 244 MPs voted for the Law, 0 – against, abstained – 3.

Votes were casted by such parliamentary groups as Petro Poroshenko Bloc – 102 “for”, People’s Front – 56 “for”, Opposition Bloc – 21 “for”, Union Self Reliance – 15 “for”, Radical Party of Oleg Liashko – 13 “for”, groups People’s Will – 4 “for”, MP group Revival Party – 10 “for”, and non-parliamentary MPs – 23 “for”. Parliamentarians from the Fatherland parliamentary group did not cast their votes.

This bill implements the standards of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Ukraine, including the best practices of other countries. It is about disclosing beneficial owners, information on contracts and reporting on each license. Adoption of this document will allow seeing which companies have “dormant” licenses.

“It would not be possible to adopt this law without a truly effective cooperation between all parties concerned. On the one hand, representatives of non-governmental organizations, who want this sector to be truly transparent, have joined their efforts. On the other hand, these are parliamentarians and government officials implementing sectoral reforms, and extractive companies willing to play according to the rules, pay taxes and increase gas production,” said Olena Pavlenko, President of the DiXi Group Analytical Center, commenting on the adoption of the law.

It should be mentioned that the DiXi Group Analytical Center was actively involved in the drafting and promotion of the bill. In particular, DiXi created and distributed on the Internet a video message of activists along with the animated video clip and a series of infographics (Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, Figure 4).