The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published its 2026 Review of the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Ukraine, updating the 2021 assessment and benchmarking reforms against the OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises revised in 2024. The review finds that Ukraine has materially strengthened the formal governance framework despite wartime constraints, but that implementation is uneven across the portfolio and key market and accountability gaps remain. Legislative and policy reforms since 2021, including the 2024 SOE Law and the State Ownership Policy adopted in late 2024, have clarified the state’s role as owner, reinforced supervisory boards’ authority and fiduciary duties, expanded disclosure and reporting requirements, and introduced tools such as letters of expectations, a privatisation strategy and an SOE “triage” categorisation. The OECD highlights persistent weaknesses in practice, including fragmented ownership responsibilities across nearly 80 ministries and public bodies, continued conflicts of interest where ownership and regulatory roles are combined, and competitive neutrality risks linked to wartime exemptions and support measures such as insolvency moratoria and limits on state aid enforcement. Public service obligations are described as insufficiently formalised and inconsistently compensated, while disclosure remains patchy in practice, particularly for critical infrastructure and defence-related entities, and board effectiveness is weakened by delays in appointments, interim management arrangements and ad hoc governance changes in some large SOEs. The OECD sets out a short- and medium-term reform roadmap focused on translating legal reforms into consistent portfolio-wide practice, including strengthening ownership co-ordination (and ultimately moving towards a centralised or effectively co-ordinated ownership function), sharpening and institutionalising the triage process, progressively restoring competitive neutrality as conditions allow, improving PSO costing and accounting separation, and reinforcing merit-based board nomination and evaluation processes. It also points to near-term transparency deliverables, including a first comprehensive Annual Aggregate Report on the SOE portfolio due by 1 July 2026, and an expectation that major enterprises publish annual audited financial statements and report systematically on PSO costs and material liabilities such as guarantees by 2027.
OECD 2026-04-01
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reviews governance of Ukraine’s state-owned enterprises and urges stronger implementation
The OECD’s 2026 review of corporate governance in Ukraine’s state-owned enterprises finds that although the formal framework has materially improved since 2021, implementation is uneven and major market and accountability gaps remain. It cites fragmented ownership, conflicts where ownership and regulatory roles overlap, competitive neutrality risks from wartime exemptions, weakly defined and compensated public service obligations, patchy disclosure, and board effectiveness problems. The report proposes short- and medium-term reforms, including stronger ownership coordination, institutionalising triage, restoring competitive neutrality, better PSO costing and accounting separation, merit-based board appointments and evaluations, and higher transparency standards by 2027.