SME Legal Environment Meeting Minutes 27 May, 2005

1. REGISTRATION AND PUBLICATION OF NORMATIVE ACTS

Florentin Blanc, IFC made presentation of the current situation in the area of registration and publication of normative acts. According to the rules of Tajikistan normative acts issued in the country have to be registered by the Ministry of Justice. However, this is not the case due to the following key problems:

·              Many ministries and government agencies do not submit their normative acts for approval;

·              If they do, the process takes too long time due to the big number of officials of the MoJ responsible for normative acts registration;

·              MoJ does not have capacity for this activity, both physical (computers, printing equipment, finance) and specialist.

The possible solutions for the problem could be:

·              Publication of the normative acts at the Internet, which has its negatives, as Internet is not accessed by everyone;

·              Publication of the normative acts at a Government owned newspaper;

·              Establishment of a separate publication unit within the Government (and possibly supported by WBG?), as is practiced in some other countries of the world.

This issue will be the focus of work during the second phase of MIGA/FIAS project.

Additional information:

Contacts:          Mr. Florentin Blanc, IFC

                        Mr. Hassan Aliev, IFC/MIGA

2. COORDINATION ISSUES

?SME Map? format was sent by Florentin Blanc to all participants of the SME Legal Environment Working Group after the previous meeting. No comments had been received so far, but would still be appreciated.

Florentin Blanc informed the participants about the WBI workshop on improvement of investment climate in Tajikistan to be held in Dushanbe on 29-30 June. The workshop will create a forum for discussion of various investments issues, microfinance, inspections and licensing among them.

Following the previous discussions between working group members and the Government of Tajikistan it was decided to hold a joint meeting of the SME working group and representatives of the Government during the 3^rd week of June.

Nigina Salibaeva, Pragma informed the meting participants of the development by Pragma Corporation of a new law, regulating local and foreign investments procedures, which is due to be submitted to the Ministry of Economy in the week of 29^th May. Working group meeting members were requested to provide their comments on the draft law that Nigina is supposed to send to everyone electronically.

3. ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES

Bill Kennedy, ARD/Checchi told the working group members that development of the Administrative Procedures Code is in progress and a workshop on this is going to take place in June. An expert from US will be soon coming to the country to finalize the Code.

Additional information:

Contacts:          Bill Kennedy, ARD/Checchi

4. PLEDGE AND MORTGAGE

Bill Kennedy, ARD/Checchi updated the working group participants on the situation with the pledge registry, designed for use by the banks of the country, which is being prepared with the MoJ and will be finalized in a couple of weeks.

For additional information please contact:

Bill Kennedy, ARD/Checchi

5.MICROFINANCE

Michael Schneider, GTZ, expressed his concern with the current system of licenses/certificates issuance to microfinance institutions. MoJ does not yet have proper requirements on MLF reporting, considering the last as proper banks. In addition, obtaining certificates is as difficult as getting licenses.

Additional information:

Contacts:          Michael Schneider, GTZ

6.LICENSING

Alexander Kitain, WB presented the work of joint group of IFC, WB and Pragma Corporation on improvement of the law on licensing. It was agreed that the draft law would be send to working group members on Monday for comments and further discussion on a meeting during the week after. The purpose of the law is reduction of the number of activities to be licensed in order to improve the quality of goods and services in Tajikistan.

Additional information:

Contacts:          Mr. Alexander Kitain, World Bank

Mr. Florentin Blanc, IFC

Mr Akbar Muratov or Ms Nigina Salibaeva, Pragma Corporation

7. STATISTICS

Florentin Blanc, IFC made a short presentation of the current problems in the area of statistics, which requires, as all agreed, massive technical assistance. Currently, the database of enterprises is maintained in such a way that basic information is only available with 9 months delay approximately.

Additional information:

Contacts:          Mr. Florentin Blanc, IFC