Financial exemptions for statups in Ukraine

The question of no small importance that is connected with organization and activity of innovation start-ups is support on the part of the government. Since the major part of the start-ups some way or other is connected with introduction and implementation of modern information technologies, the current problem is providing the financial support and applying tax advantages in the sphere of innovations.

In order to gain insight on those questions, we should refer to the Law of Ukraine “About innovation technology”. Namely this normative legal act gives definitions of the main terms connected with innovation activity.

According to this Law, an enterprise is an innovational enterprise which develops, produces, and sells the innovative products or services whose amount in monetary equivalent exceeds 70% of the total amount of production (services).

As is seen from this definition, the fundamental sign is the activity connected with the innovative product or the innovative products. According to the above-mentioned Law, an innovative product is the result of scientific research (scientific construction) development. Innovative products are new competitive goods or services. An innovative product or products should comply with requirements set by the Law “About innovation activity”. An essential condition is that the innovative products (or product) are the result of implementation of an innovative project which should be registered in the State register of innovative projects. Besides that, it is necessary that the products (the product) are produced in Ukraine for the first time or have significantly higher quality factors compared with analogues presented at the market.

Only provided that those norms of the Law “About innovation activity” are complied with, we can speak about creation and functioning of an innovation enterprise that can count on financial support of the part of the government

Financial support for innovation enterprises can be rendered as:

a) full non-interest-bearing crediting (based on conditions of inflation adjustment) of the priority innovative projects on account of the means of the Government budget of Ukraine and of the means of the local budgets;

b) partial (up to 50%) non-interest-bearing crediting (based on conditions of inflation adjustment) of the innovative projects on accounts of the means of the Government budget of Ukraine and of the means of the local budgets provided that the rest of the required project contractor’s means and (or other innovation activity entities’ means) are attracted for the financing of the project;

c) full or partial compensation (on account of the means of the Government budget of Ukraine and of the means of the local budgets) of the interest that is paid by the innovation activity entities to the commercial banks and other credit and financial institutions in connection with the crediting of the innovative projects;

d) providing the governmental guarantee to the commercial banks that perform the crediting of the priority innovative projects;

e) property insurance of implementation of innovative projects with insurance carriers according to the Law of Ukraine “About insurance”.

Governmental guarantees for innovation activity are provided by the norms of the Commercial Code of Ukraine.

Besides that, a number of preferences for innovation enterprises are provided by the Laws “About special procedure of innovation activity of technological parks” (action grants) and “About governmental regulation of activity in the sphere of transfer of technologies” (governmental guarantees of credit commitments).