The state loses four million hryvnias daily due to the blocking of the Novosilkivsk distillery: Halyna Yanchenko
During the war, information constantly appears about how they try to abuse powers, profit from schemes, block the work of businesses and avoid filling the budget, when the state needs every hryvnia. People’s deputy Halyna Yanchenko commented another case that demonstrates problems in the sphere of work of control bodies, which create losses for the budget already.
Halyna Yanchenko said that the state loses four million hryvnias every day due to the blocking of the Novosilkiv distillery, which has been forced to idle for two years due to the lack of a license. She emphasized that the enterprise was purchased by the investor absolutely legally – at an open tender organized by the State Property Fund. However, despite all the conditions of the purchase being fulfilled, the company cannot work only because of the inaction of the State Tax Service, which does not issue the necessary license.
She explained that we are talking about the Novosilkiv distillery in the Ternopil region. According to her, the state could receive up to one and a half billion hryvnias in excise revenue every year if the plant was put into operation and worked at full capacity. She recalled that the auction for the sale of the enterprise was held in July 2023, the starting price then was 31.8 million hryvnias, but during the bidding process the plant was sold for 90 million hryvnias.
Yanchenko noted that despite the completion of all the necessary procedures by the investor, the enterprise is still not working, because without a license of the DPS, it cannot start the production process. She reported that during a meeting with the company’s representatives, which she held as part of the work of the Parliamentary Special Commission on the Protection of Investors’ Rights, it became known that the tax department is blocking the issuance of a license due to an alleged technical error in the submitted documents.
According to Yanchenko, such formal reasons become the basis for the actual stoppage of production, and therefore, the loss of budget revenues. She emphasized that the state loses four million hryvnias every day due to the inactivity of the control bodies at this particular enterprise alone. She asked a rhetorical question: does the country really not need taxes in the conditions of war, when every hryvnia is important for financing defense.
She also emphasized another aspect — if state bodies block the operation of enterprises even after their legal privatization, who will participate in further privatization auctions at all, if the state itself then prevents the operation of the acquired property.
Yanchenko drew attention to the fact that this case is not the first. She reminded that two years ago, the Parliamentary special commission already considered a similar case of the Chervonoslobyd distillery. Then the company was also deprived of the opportunity to work for a long time due to the reluctance of the tax authority to renew the license. According to her, this plant was idle for six months due to the fact that the DPS did not consider the submitted documents, and purely formal violations became the basis for suspending the license.
The People’s Deputy gave specific figures: during six months of downtime, the state lost approximately half a billion hryvnias in tax revenue, which could have been paid if the plant had been working. She stated that after the history of the Chervonoslobyd distillery became public, four more enterprises appealed to the special commission with complaints about similar actions of the DPS.
According to her, the complaints were reduced to one scheme: enterprises were deprived of licenses based on the results of inspections, usually due to minor formal violations. After that, the production was sealed, the activity was stopped, and the documents for renewal of licenses were simply not considered by the tax office.
Yanchenko explained that only thanks to the intervention of Prime Minister Denys Shmygal, it was possible to resolve the situation with the Chervonoslobyd plant and eliminate legislative loopholes used by the tax office to delay decision-making. She reported that the Verkhovna Rada adopted draft law No. 10346, which established specific terms for tax procedures: the term of sealing or unsealing cannot exceed five working days from the moment of the company’s application.
In addition, Yanchenko reminded that changes were made to the government resolution, which canceled the wartime norm regarding the unlimited response of state authorities to business requests. She emphasized that the tax office actively used this norm, ignoring numerous appeals by enterprises.
Now, according to Yanchenko, irrational behavior on the part of the DPS is being observed again during the period when the country is at war, and every hryvnia of budget revenues is extremely important for financing defense needs.
The People’s Deputy asked direct questions: what amount will the budget lose this time and which of the tax officials will be responsible for these losses. She concluded that the Parliamentary special commission has already taken this case of the Novosilkiv distillery into work, prepared a parliamentary appeal and is now waiting for explanations from the tax authorities.
