On December 17, 2025, the Business Ombudsman Council presented an Analytical Note “Centralized Procurement Organization: New Approaches to Procurement Recovery-Related Issues”.
The event brought together a wide range of key stakeholders, including the Deputy Head of the Restoration Agency Yuriy Sverba, SE Infrastructure Projects CPO representatives, SE Prozorro, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP). Leading business associations representatives, in particular EBA, Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (UCCI), Confederation of Builders of Ukraine (CBU), as well as experts from international technical assistance projects (EUACI, EU4Reconstruction), Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) and representatives of leading companies joined the discussion.
Opening the event, Business Ombudsman Roman Waschuk noted that working on the Centralized Procurement Organization (CPO) issue is continuation of the Council’s efforts to protect recovery processes. He emphasized that present-day outdated approaches to pricing and remuneration create a situation where almost every purchase is on law enforcers’ radar. “Instead of looking for the guilty post-facto within hundreds of criminal proceedings, it is necessary to establish preventive and clear rules of the game,” he emphasized.
The Deputy Head of the Restoration Agency Yurii Sverba, in turn, thanked the Council for developing high-quality systemic recommendations on the CPO and pointed out a comprehensive and thorough approach to elaborating joint solutions. “Instead of responding to hundreds of individual appeals every time, we focused on creating a CPO systemic operation mechanism. It will make recovery processes transparent and effective across the entire state,” he stressed.
The Deputy Business Ombudsman Tetiana Korotka emphasized during her welcome speech that the Council was an equidistant institution acting like a “bridge” between the government, business and international partners, aiming to remove barriers for the private sector based on real cases analysis. “The Restoration Agency’s initiative to create a CPO is extremely important, and the task of the Council is to point out to those “bottlenecks” that need attention now to ensure transparency, conditions equality, and ultimately the interest of business to participate in recovery projects.”
The main part of the study was presented by Dmytro Polyansky,i the Council’s Policy&Recovery Unit Senior Lead. He dwelled in detail on key challenges of the current public procurement system, the CPO functioning specifics in the restoration field and presented the Council’s systemic recommendations. Among key conclusions are: the Council generally welcomes the CPO creation as a crucial step towards the professionalization of procurement, however, stresses the critical need for proper funding of this institution for its effective work.
The CPO chief Volodymyr Levkovych spoke about first practical results. In three months of operations, the institution has already demonstrated real potential: on average, three companies now participate in tenders where there was not a single participant before. As for financial results, within the framework of pilot projects, over UAH 20 mn has been already saved.
During the discussion, business representatives pointed out the need for greater processes transparency, reviewing outdated pricing and remuneration regulations, and switching to international design standards. Entrepreneurs expressed their willingness to support the CPO with their own expertise and manufacturer databases.
The Council sincerely thanks all the participants for the meaningful dialogue and joint efforts that formed the basis of the Analytical Note. While supporting the CPO set up, we would like to stress at the same time: the success of the initiative depends on real implementation of recommendations as well as systemic elimination of identified gaps. Only under the condition of stable resource supply, transparent oversight and the regulatory framework update, will the CPO be able to become an effective tool for Ukraine’s restoration.
You can find the Analytical Note at the link.
