On the 25th of May, 2015, during the Production Meeting held with the Works’ employees and managers as well as the contract organizations, the Chief Executive Officer of «Zaporizhstal» JSC Rostyslav Shurma declared about economic enforcement upon the Works on the part of the government officials, who are breaching the ef-fective Law of Ukraine and refuse to refund the Value Added Tax to the Works.
In the course of the meeting, Rostyslav Shurma underlined that today the Works is in a very hard situation, on the 22nd of May, «Zaporizhstal» was illegally crossed out from the enterprises list which get automatically VAT refund. “There is a cynical violation of the law of Ukraine on the part of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine. State officials dealt a serious blow to the Works. With full confidence, we can say that economic pressure is put on its workers’ collective – they artificially washed out working capital, which the Works earned itself, allocating these funds to increase employees’ salaries and to modernization. Now they have decided to illegally take away our earnings without any explanations. The next step will be the reduction of the electricity and natural gas supply, we will have to close all investment projects, a full stop businesses and social collapse will follow further», – declared the Chief Executive Officer of «Zaporizhstal» Works Rostyslav Shurma.
The Works has an exemplary financial and production history, it is the largest taxpayer in Ukraine and in Zaporozhye region. In 2014, «Zaporizhstal» JSC invested in modernization of the production facilities UAH 1.7 billiard, which ex-ceeds in hundreds times the requirements of the Internal Revenue Code for automatic VAT refund. Upon the results of 2014, «Zaporizhstal» JSC transferred to the budgets of all levels over UAH 1.4 billiard, that is for 34 % (UAH 366 mil-lion) higher than the amount transferred in 2013 (in 2013 – UAH 1.08 billiard). In April, 2015, the Works increased the employees’ salaries for 23% at an average.
Today, the total duty of the state to «Zaporizhstal» JSC in VAT refund makes up about UAH 650 million.