Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas has called on the Ukrainian authorities to exclude Estonia from the list of offshore zones, as it was included by mistake, the press service of the Estonian government told the BNS agency on Thursday, January 25.

"The inclusion of Estonia by the Ukrainian authorities in the list of offshore zones in Estonia is an unfortunate mistake, which should be immediately corrected," Ratas said during a telephone conversation with Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and in Davos, Switzerland, at a personal meeting with Ukrainian Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk.

According to Ratas, "the current situation means that Estonian enterprises operating in Ukraine have unreasonable financial additional obligations and for this reason they bear daily losses."

"This is an unacceptable situation, and the Estonian state has to defend the interests of its entrepreneurs," he said.

He said that Tallinn learned about this situation at the beginning of the year, "and representatives of Estonia contacted the Ukrainian authorities trying to solve the problem."

"Estonia and Ukraine, as members of the OECD, agreed to exchange tax and financial information. For this reason, Ukraine should contact us when there are questions about the tax system and clearly discuss all misunderstandings," Ratas said.

"No other country in the world regards Estonia as an offshore zone. Estonia is a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a member of the European Union and our tax policy complies with all international requirements and standards, including the legislation of Ukraine," Ratas said.

According to the press service of the Estonian government, Groysman and Danyliuk said that they would deal with this topic. The finance minister promised to solve this situation.

"I hope this will happen as soon as possible," Ratas said.

As reported, on December 27, 2017, the Ukrainian government decided to add 22 new countries, including Estonia and Latvia, to the Ukrainian list of offshore zones. The official reason for including Estonia in the list was that Ukraine is considering the Estonian profit tax rate as zero because of the exemption of reinvested profit from taxes, Estonian newspaper Eesti Paevaleht reported.