Ukrspyrt on verge of bankruptcy - State Audit Service

Since April 2023, the Ukrspyrt state enterprise has completely ceased production activities and has multi-million overdue debts to the state budget and other creditors.

This is stated in the message of the State Audit Service, the Ukrainian News agency reports.

"In 2020, the demonopolization and reformation of the alcohol industry began. According to forecasts, about UAH 5 billion should go to the state budget. The privatization of the places of activity and alcohol storage of the Ukrspyrt state enterprise should have been completed in 2021. Instead, as of April 1, 2024, 8 enterprises that are part of SE Ukrspyrt remain unprivatized, as a result of which Ukrspyrt did not receive UAH 95.7 million of the planned proceeds from privatization (the balance sheet value of the property, which should be paid separately by the winner of the auction)," the message says.

In addition, the company incurred more than UAH 70 million of additional costs for maintenance of non-working enterprises and loss of assets of UAH 5.2 million.

This became the reason why Ukrspyrt failed to repay its overdue debt to the state budget and other creditors by the end of 2023.

Also, according to the report, as a result of ineffective management decisions of the former management of Ukrspyrt regarding the untimely implementation of the decision of the Antimonopoly Committee, the company suffered unproductive expenses for the payment of the accrued fine in the amount of UAH 33 million.

"The total amount of detected deficiencies and violations during the use of property and funds of the enterprises is more than UAH 330 million. Separately, the auditors draw attention to the fact that the failure of Ukrspyrt to fulfil its obligations to the budget and counterparties (due to a lack of working capital) will lead to additional costs due to payment fines in the amount of UAH 29.3 million, and in the case of court rulings in favor of the plaintiffs in other cases, in the amount of UAH 8.4 million," the message says.

As the Ukrainian News agency reported, in May the Cabinet of Ministers appointed Stanislav Banchuk as the acting director of the Ukrspyrt state-owned enterprise.

The State Property Fund plans to privatize 17 objects of the Ukrspyrt state enterprise in 2024.

At the same time, as of the beginning of March, the State Property Fund transferred 54 objects of the alcohol industry to private investors through auctions in the Prozorro.Sales electronic trading system.

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