The Cabinet of Ministers on Wednesday, August 12, approved the program for reforming and developing the alcohol industry in 2020-2023.

According to the draft resolution, the text of which is available to Interfax-Ukraine, the action plan for implementation of the program provides for consideration by the Cabinet of a draft law on the accounting of denatured ethyl alcohol, chemical, and technical products with the use of flow meters (2021), a draft law on stimulation of small distillate production (2020).

The plan provides for the submission to the government of a draft law on the regulation of the legal protection of geographical names of alcoholic beverages (2021), a draft law on the introduction of electronic licensing for the production and circulation of alcohol (2020), and the approval of ethyl alcohol consumption rates for the production of alcoholic beverages by the order of the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture of Ukraine (2022).

Besides, it is planned for 2021 to develop and coordinate the procedure for keeping the unified register of alcohol storage locations in electronic form and to approve it by the order of the Ministry of Finance after the adoption of the law on keeping this register.

The plan includes measures for auditing state-owned distilleries (2020), asset inventory (2020), privatization of distilleries (2020-2021), modernization by investors of distilleries' capacities (2020-2022), repayment of overdue debts (2020-2022), reforming state-owned enterprises of the industry (2020-2022), stoppage of trade with strong alcoholic drinks that do not meet the requirements of legislation (2020-2023), increasing responsibility for illegal production, storage, transportation and sale of excisable goods (2020-2023).

It is expected that the implementation of the above-mentioned program will increase production and sales volumes: ethyl alcohol for food needs by 20%, denatured ethyl alcohol for technical needs by 20%, bioethanol by 10%, distillates and alcoholic drinks by 15%.

Besides, the program is expected to reduce the shadow market for ethyl alcohol and create 500 workplaces.