Ukraine ‘must revamp labour laws and step up privatisation to fix economy’
Ukraine needs to revamp its labour laws and redouble efforts to privatise thousands of companies to repair its economy, its president’s economic adviser has said.
Alexander Rodnyansky, an adviser to the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the war-torn country needed to speed up efforts to reform industries as it looked to rebuild after Russia’s invasion.
Rodnyansky told the Guardian that the Ukrainian government needed to “create the foundations for rapid economic growth” while also financing the conflict.
Ukraine faces a debt crisis as well as inflation of more than 20% as the country counts the cost of Russia’s offensive.
Rodnyansky, who is also a professor of economics at the University of Cambridge, said “receiving more foreign aid is the easiest way to fund the war”; however, efforts were being made to cut spending, collect taxes and issue debt to finance its efforts.
He said that Zelenskiy and his top team were also examining priorities to rebuild the economy, including progressing efforts initiated before the war to rework 50-year-old labour regulations. “We have deep issues with our labour code, developed in the 1970s, that needs to be overhauled.
“We’re going to try to emulate a more liberal approach, like Denmark, with a flexible labour market because we need to catch up.”
Rodnyansky said there were “peculiarities with our post-Soviet system” that had fuelled red tape. “If you want to let someone off on holiday, there is four pages of bureaucracy you need to go through.
“There are also more conventional things to reform: ease of hiring, ease of firing, severance pay, flexible hours and contracts and fixed-term contracts.”
Labour organisations have expressed concerns over workers’ rights amid the Ukrainian government’s
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