The existing procedure for holding tenders to lease property has problems that allow unfair bidders to derail the tenders, and the State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF) has proposed to introduce a requirement to present a deposit by bidders in these tenders, acting SPF Head Dmytro Parfenenko has said.

"We have initiated changes to the rules of holding tenders to lease property by offering a deposit and one more advance payment. The tenant can confirm the seriousness of his intention, we can ask him to pay rent in advance for six months at the stage of entering into a lease relationship," he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

Parfenenko said that unlike the tenders to sell state-owned property, where the guarantee of the buyer's fulfillment of his obligations is a deposit, this tool is not required in the regulations of leasing.

"As a rule, unscrupulous tenants raise rent at the bidding stage, and then refuse to sign a lease agreement," he said, describing the scheme to derail tenders.

He said that when discussing the deposit initiative at a meeting of the government committee, it was also proposed to consider the possibility of making it not only with money, but also with a bank guarantee.

"Now we are deciding the bank of which category should provide this guarantee. I think that this month we will finalize all the issues," Parfenenko said.

Commenting on the advance payment, he said that this requirement is actively used when private property is leased.

Parfenenko said that currently the SPF is experiencing difficulties with the implementation of the budget target for rental income, which was doubled - UAH from 800 million to UAH 1.6 billion, as the number of facilities leased is decreasing.

"For example, we have created PJSC Ukrzaliznytsia. The form of ownership has been transformed from public into private. Money for rent goes to the accounts of Ukrzaliznytsia, which administers the lease of its facilities," he said.

He added that the same situation occurred with Ukrposhta and a number of other companies.

In this regard, Parfenenko suggested that the State Property Fund, and not the ministry, deals with issues of transferring state property to concession.

"Concession is, in fact, the same as the lease, but let the decision be made by the government," he said.

Commenting on the instruction given early June by Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman to analyze whether the rates the State Property Fund uses for leasing state-owned property are undervalued, he said that the situation is often the opposite: the existing valuation methods result in overestimation of the rates compared to market prices.

"I repeatedly came out with the initiative to introduce a decreasing coefficient of 0.7 for the property. We were allowed to do this only for integral property complexes, but these integral property complexes are only 110 out of about 20,000 lease agreements," Parfenenko said, describing the situation.

He said that he has submitted to the government the analysis of rental rates conducted under a request of the prime minister.