Mr. Arthur Herasimov, the Representative of the President in the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) was a special guest speaker at MIM-Kyiv’s “Business and Power Dialogues” series. Mr. Herasimov’s presentation was very interesting for the event attendees as he is one of those officials who moved to the public sector from corporate Ukraine after Euromaidan in order to reform the country.

“Public service is the most unstable place,” said he. “When you work in private sector it is enough to have your strategy, responsibilities and mandate, and do your best to achieve the set objectives. In public sector you have to negotiate with everyone and reconcile every interest imaginable which makes the process much longer than in business.”

Communication is a key to success, believes Mr. Herasimov. In his opinion business operates in companies’ or industry environment whereas public sector operates on macro-level. Therefore, private sector representatives should use all opportunities to let the legislators know their opinions. Moreover, the legislators need and want private sector expertise. In addition to lack of business knowledge, not all MPs clearly understand that they are expected to work hard and not all of them are ready do so. All that makes the pace of reforms slow.

Mr. Herasimov especially underlined that the President and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and Parliament are open for communications. Thus, business should do its best to make official Kyiv know what it needs. “Earlier, private – public dialogue 80 % depended on public side whereas nowadays its influence is no more than 50%,” he stressed.

Such organizations as ACC, EBA, etc. are very important for the dialogue because they are designed to lobby their members’ interests and they have expertise for that. They know how decisions are made who are key people on the way and how to go through all the procedures.

Special attention was paid to healthcare reform, corruption and structural reform perspectives. “There are far more positive than negative results of public sector activities,” Mr. Herasimov said. “Although we’ve launched public private dialogue we won’t succeed unless you help us. It is probably the main corporate social responsibility.”