IT companies are experiencing difficulties with reserving staff under martial law in accordance with the new procedure and have not yet been able to book a single employee, the IT Ukraine association said on Thursday.

"Now, according to the information of the IT Ukraine association, none of the companies has reserved employees according to the new procedure," its press release says.

According to the executive director of IT Ukraine, Kostiantyn Vasiuk, the reserving procedure is moving very slowly, most applications are still under consideration.

"We have analyzed the procedure, and we already have some recommendations that we will share with the government in order to improve and speed up its passage. The first problematic issue is the powers of state bodies under the new procedure. That is, they do not always meet the powers, which are enshrined in relevant laws. Secondly, the procedure does not have clear deadlines for considering applications from businesses. They are not enshrined in the law. Thus, such applications can lie on the tables for months," Vasiuk notes.

In addition, according to him, there is also a certain inconsistency between state bodies.

"If, for example, a company is refused at any stage, the whole procedure starts over. Thus, the business loses valuable time," he explains.

At the same time, Vasiuk noted that ministries and officials are open to dialogue, but given the complexity of the processes and the large number of applications, it is necessary to improve processing at the operational level in order to speed up the entire process.

The association also pointed out the lack of a transparent, fast and understandable procedure that would provide an opportunity to carry out short-term trips abroad for the purpose of carrying out business activities for industry representatives, due to which Ukrainian IT companies may lose part of the market abroad, and this ultimately threatens reduction in tax revenues to the budget.