The Minister of Energy is against the unification of state mines in a holding

Minister of Energy and Environmental Protection of Ukraine Oleksiy Orzhel considers it inappropriate to combine state-owned coal assets within one holding, reports BusinessCensor.

“We did not support the logic of creating the National Coal Company”. Frankly, when we combine something profitable with something unprofitable, it becomes more ineffective and it’s hard to figure out what needs to be built, modernized or liquidated”, he said on ICTV.

Orzhel noted that the Ministry is aware of the problems of abuse and non-transparency in procurement by state miners, which leads to their loss-making and overstatement of the cost of coal mining.

On December 6, 2017, the previous composition of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine by decree No.1019-r created the state-owned enterprise National Coal Company, which was supposed to combine the majority of state assets of the industry.

Thanks to the decree, the process of reforming the coal industry should begin by optimizing the non-core assets of coal mining enterprises, increase their investment attractiveness, accelerate the pace of preparation of mines for privatization, and bring coal prices to an economically feasible level.

The enterprise "National Coal Company" has not yet begun to work fully.

Recall that the government allocated 1 billion UAH for salaries to miners.