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SME Legal Environment Meeting Minutes 29 April, 2005 Agenda
14.00-16:00 - . IFC Private Enterprise Partnership Tajikistan Office
- ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURE
Update on the preparation of the law ? ARD/Checchi
Suhrob Hojimatov, USAID-ARD/Checchi Legal Infrastructure project, informed about the current status of the preparation of the draft Administrative Procedure Code. The Code will regulate relations between citizens (individual and legal entities) and administrative agencies, excluding President?s Executive office, Parliament, Courts, Prosecutor?s office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Military agencies.
The idea to develop a Code came up 3 years ago. In February 2005 the Government resolution was adopted to set up a working group on draft preparation (including Ministry of Justice, President?s Executive office, General Prosecutor?s office, Ministry of Economy, Council of Justice, State Agency for Anti-monopoly Policy and Support of Entrepreneurship). The first draft both in Russian and English will be ready by the end of June 2005 and circulated among international experts for review and feedback, the final version will be available and submitted to the Government in July. It is expected that it will be sent to Parliament in October and possibly adopted in December this year.
For the moment 60% of the work has been done and 7 out of 9 chapters have been reviewed. In addition the Law on Appeals, the Law on Normative Acts and some Government regulations are being reviewed.
The Administrative Procedure Law will cover both Individual Administrative Acts, and Normative Administrative Acts. Most importantly, it lays out procedures for their preparation (consultation process for normative ones, for instance), and gives to citizens the right to appeal. Administrative appeals go to the higher level inside the agency responsible for issuing the act, and when the highest level is reached, to an Administrative Appeals Commission to be established under the Government. Inside each State structure will be established specific administrative appeal commissions, so that the appeal is not examined by the person/department that took the original decision. The A.P. Law should give an overall legal framework for (nearly) all administrative proceedings, with guarantees for the citizen, transparency, consultations, appeal rights etc. ? however, it is expected that its real implementation will be difficult, and that changes that are required in the way administrative bodies work will take years.
For court appeals against administrative decisions, it was decided by the Government not to create a separate set of Administrative Courts, but only Administrative Judges/Chambers inside existing courts as (1) the Government did not want to change the current constitutional system that forces to have courts in all the raions, (2) there were obvious budget constraints that made it impossible to establish new courts in all raions of the country. Evidently, real enforcement of the law will require profound changes in the ways courts work, that will only happen over years.
Additional information
Contacts:
William Kennedy, Suhrob Hojimatov - ARD/Checchi, USAID LIME Project in Tajikistan
- PLEDGE AND MORTGAGE
Update and comments on the law on pledge of moveable property and pledge registry ? ARD/Checchi, TMSEF
Update on other pledge/mortgage issues ? ARD/Checchi, IFC
William Kennedy, ARD/Checchi, informed the participants about the study tour organized for a group of specialists from the Ministry of Justice as well as Savings Bank (Amonatbonk) of RT to Sarajevo, Bosnia. The goal of the trip was to provide them with hands-on training on the implementation of a pledge registry system there and give an idea of what the similar system in Tajikistan will look like and how the registry office will work.
The issue of motor vehicle collateral that is considered as immoveable property and thus cannot for the moment be used under the new pledge law still remains to be solved. To address this, ARD/Checchi is now working with the Ministry of Justice to amend the Civil Code to take motor vehicles out of the definition of "Immoveable Property," where they were originally placed under the Soviet system because of their high value, and bring them within the realm of the new Pledge Law (which applies only to moveable property), so security interests in motor vehicles would be recorded in the computerized central registry as "specific property" using the Chassis Number.
Another issue is the language of the registry to be installed and used. Initial proposal to have the registry used in all Central Asia and have one language common to all the CIS countries (i.e. Russian) was not supported by the Government that wants it to be in the State (i.e. Tajik) language. This creates technical difficulties with recognition of Tajik font by the software.
There was also discussion on the issues raised by TMSEF related to registration of collateral:
Registration procedure of moveable collateral is complicated due to distance of registry offices from many raions (for the moment the registration is planned to be done only in oblast centres, as the Ministry of Justice has branches only at that level, not at the raion level).
Recommendation: to open up local-up registry offices either in the main centres of regions that are too far from the oblast capitals: Kulyab, Aini, Garm or in regions where business is concentrated: Shaartuz, Istaravshan etc.
ARD/Checchi informed that during the next meeting they will make a presentation on how to fill in the pledge form (notification) required for the registration. It?s also planned to conduct a number of trainings for bank/MFI officers on this topic till the end of the project (August).
Additional information
Contact person: William Kennedy- ARD/Checchi
Florentin Blanc, IFC, informed on the start a new project on Mortgage/Housing Finance, in May 2005 that will provide technical assistance as well as be associated with a regional (Central Asia) facility for mortgage lending. However is expected that the first year be mostly an assessment phase and practical implementation will start later. Updates on the project will be given by Florentin Blanc in May 2005 meeting.
- LICENSING
Update on ongoing work on regulations for the licensing law and possible work on targeted revision of the law ? IFC, World Bank, PRAGMA
Nigina Salibaeva, TFI/USAID, gave an outline of the project implementation process and updated on the status of licensing regulations.
The Law (adopted in May 2004) on licensing along with a Government regulation will replace over 800 normative acts to regulate licensing procedures.
The final version of the draft regulation is to be submitted to the Government by May 12, 2005. There is also work being done on introducing amendments to other laws and regulations contradicting the new ones.
Florentin Blanc, IFC, added that some recommendations on reducing the number of activities subject to licensing and on further simplifying the licensing regime have been given to President?s office and that an improvement of the law is expected to be included in the conditionalities of the World Bank?s Policy Based Credit for 2005.
Technical assistance is being provided to:
- Finalize the regulation
- Prepare amendments to the licensing law
The preliminary work will finish by the end of June 2005 and after the documents will be distributed to the ministries and agencies, competent organizations, and, entrepreneurs for comments and recommendations (August 2005).
Recommendation: E-mail key points, principles to reduce the number of activities and include this topic to the next meeting agenda.
Additional information
Contacts: for PRAGMA - Akbar Muratov, Nigina Salibaeva ? TFI/USAID
for IFC and World Bank ? Florentin Blanc, Alex Kitain
- REGISTRATION AND PUBLICATION OF NORMATIVE ACTS
Presentation of situation ? potential actions ?FIAS/MIGA
FIAS/MIGA Improvement of Investment Climate and Investment Facilitation Project applied to the Government of RT to make an estimation of funds needed to registry and publicize normative acts.
An internal working document - Matrix on Current Donor Programs and Specific Projects in the Area of Investment Climate was distributed among meeting participants for comments and feedback.
Additional information
Contacts: Florentin Blanc - Tajikistan SME Survey and Policy project,
Hassan Aliev - FIAS/MIGA project
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
- William Kennedy, Chief of Party, USAID-ARD/Checchi LIME Project
- Suhrob Hojimatov, Senior Attorney, USAID/ARD Checchi
- Hassan Aliev, Consultant, FIAS/MIGA Investment Climate and Facilitation Project
- Michael Schneider, Project Manager, GTZ
- Klaus Lehrke, Project Leader ?Rural Financial System?, Kyrgyzstan, GTZ
- Bakhriddin Shermatov, Assistant to Senior Economic Affairs Officer, OSCE
- Akbar Muratov, Country Manager, USAID-PRAGMA TFI Project
- Nigina Salibaeva, Attorney, USAID-PRAGMA TFI Project
- Christoph Ziegler, Project Manager, TMSEF/LFS
- Ruslan Ilalov, Attorney, TMSEF/LFS
- Enrico Pinali, Consultant/PSD/FSD, World Bank
- Alexander Kitain, Consultant/PSD, World Bank
- Florentin Blanc, IFC Tajikistan SME Survey and Policy Project (hosting)
Minutes taken by Manizha Sharifova, IFC Tajikistan SME Survey and Policy Project
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