Issue #1 (Volume 7 2018)

The article offers an investigation of the level of the shadow economy in Ukraine in the period 2007–2016, the structure of the shadow (“grey”) economy in the sectoral section, Ukraine’s place in world rankings in terms of economic freedom, corruption, favorable business conditions, and competitiveness. The main reasons of high level of shadow sector of the national economy are considered, and several measures regarding the reduction of the shadow economy in Ukraine and improvement of its economic situation are presented.

The introduction of a qualitatively new type of relationship between citizens and authorities, one in which every person would be guaranteed real observation and protection of the rights and freedoms in these bodies activity, should be one of the priority areas of socio-political transformation in Ukraine. The urgency of the improving local finances, the formation of local budgets and the use of their funds is increasing due to changes in local self-government.

The article proposes a scientific methodological approach to assessing the level of financial decentralization in Ukraine during the period of the decentralization reform (2014–2017). The universal integral indicator of financial decentralization has been calculated, which has found that local budgets improve public funds management, which is illustrated by the growth of the integral indicator level in dynamics.

A number of recommendations are also provided for improving the budget process transparency for each of the components: budget information openness, the state and effectiveness of budgetary supervision, and public participation in the budget process. The idea of the relationship between the budget process transparency and the results of the financial decentralization reform is proposed.

The main purpose of the study was to establish the conformity of South African legislation and policies to the global principles of Open Contracting. The specific objective of the study was to establish whether South African legislation supports the application of Open Contracting in public sector procurement. The study employed a descriptive survey research design. Primary data was collected using questionnaires targeting members of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply Chain (CIPS) employed in the South African public service. A total of 300 (100%) completed questionnaires were returned. Fifty-two (52) of the targeted 300 respondents were excluded from the study. They were found not to be “public procurement champions”. This would imply that a final total sample size of 248 was employed in this study, thus a realization of 82.7%. The study findings revealed that although government institutions have policy statements for Open Contracting, the principles are not fully implemented. The study recommends that the National Treasury put forward a single coherent, comprehensive and overarching procurement law to standardize and clarify the procurement process to be followed by procuring entities in South Africa. Particularly the study recommends the development of a policy framework for the implementation of Open Contracting in the South African public sector procurement system.

The aim of the article is to study the peculiarities of housing and utility services enterprises activity as factors of influence on their development potential.

Research methodology. When solving the tasks given in the article, method of hypotheses and statistical research, methods for analyzing socio-economic factors of influence on enterprises’ development potential are used.

Results. The authors proved the fairness of the presented scientific hypotheses as for peculiarities of housing and utility services enterprises in Ukraine, specifically, existence of natural monopoly of housing and utility services enterprises; limitations of the enterprise management functions in the sphere of setting up prices and standards for services; necessity to ensure long-term activities and continuity of production; non-compliance of quality, nomenclature of services, their reliability, economic feasibility of the tariffs, social and environmental labor security with the requirements of European standards for country’s development; presence of the significant accounts receivable, which is caused by time lag between the consumers’ use of services and resources provided and paying for them; dependence of results of enterprises financial activity on the current political and economic situation in the country.

Practical implications of the research results. Taking into account the proved hypotheses, vector directions of housing and utility services enterprises development potential were shaped in the article.

One of the main problems of the fiscal decentralization in Ukraine is the substantiation of the optimal proportion of the personal income tax distribution among the state and different types of local budgets in order to insure the sufficient financial resources for the territorial communities. Since period of the Budget Code adoption, the percentage of the personal income tax paid from salaries to the different levels of budgets has changed three times. However, the methodic of such distribution is not clear. The authors suggest approach of analyzing the logic of the personal income tax distribution on the game theory basis. They consider different ways of making decisions and prove that in all of the analyzed cases the winner was the central government of Ukraine. Such behavior of the central government in making decisions does not meet the goals of the fiscal decentralization reform. The main reason of such situation is that the decisions are made by the state government, but not by the local communities or their representatives. Besides, it is difficult to distribute the expenditures among different types of budgets according to the Governments’ competences. The authors suggest some recommendation of the personal income tax distribution in order to ensure benefits for all participants of the game: communities, local governments and central government. But they conclude that the active influence of people on the behavior of the local governments is the basic premise for the scientific research of the PIT optimal distribution.