The full renewal of the National Television Company of Ukraine will require USD 100 million, as the Liga.Biznes informs, referring to the NTCU’s First Deputy Head Alexander Kharebin.
Mr. Kharebin spoke about the National TV Company reform to establish an independent public broadcasting.
“It was decided to incorporate into NTCU all regional TV and radio companies, the National Radio Company (NRCU), and the Ukrtelefilm studio, as well as the TV channel “Kultura”. NTCU has actually become a platform for creating public broadcasting”, as he stated.
The first reforming stage was finalized on September 30, i.e. it was the administrative integration of all NCTU’s companies, and all legal offices of those companies ceased their operation. As early as on 1 January, 2017, NTCU starts transfering assets to the future National Public Television Company of Ukraine (NOTU).
“The State Property fund (SPF) relied on the independent assessors’ reports to estimate the authorized capital of the Public Corporation (PAT) at the amount of UAH 2.544 billion. Unfortunately, this evaluation does not include intangible assets like intellectual property rights to all the content, produced by the state-owned TV and Radio broadcasters for decades. They were taken out of actual assessment to be evaluated in terms of that future PAT. The reason is that their correct assessment requires a long time” as Mr. Kharebin clarified.
He also stressed that the global renewal of fixed assets in the near future would be the main problem of NOTU. A full-scale reequipment of the company, according to Mr. Kharebin, requires an amount equal to one hundred million US dollars, which now stands at about UAH 2.6 billion.
“The company last purchased equipment globally in 1996. It was a so-called Japanese loan, when the Japanese government funded the TV stock renewal. Moreover, let me remark that NTCU still owes money for it to Ukreximbank. Obviously, it is much more efficient for the new public broadcaster initially to create everything from scratch. From purchasing state of the art equipment, on down to optimizing and structuring its staff. But you know that we live in a social welfare country. Therefore, it was decided to transform the existing state television into the same public one riddled with debts and liabilities”, as the deputy head of the National Television Company of Ukraine summarized.
