Prozorro.Sale

Prozorro.Sale is Ukraine's state electronic auction system, run by a joint-stock company owned by the Ministry of Economy and launched in 2016 with Transparency International Ukraine, the Deposit Guarantee Fund and the National Bank. It is a central database, not a shop: privatisation bodies, municipalities, customs offices, insolvency administrators and state banks publish lots into it, and buyers reach them through more than 40 accredited private marketplaces wired to that database.

What you can buy

• Real estate: shops, offices, warehouses, workshops, unfinished construction, social and cultural facilities and flats, sold under small privatisation or by bankruptcy estates.
• Land: municipal and state plots sold outright or as lease rights, plus seized agricultural land.
• Vehicles and rolling stock: cars from sanctioned-asset and insolvency estates, and lease rights to Ukrzaliznytsia freight wagons.
• Bankruptcy and financial assets: debtor property in court insolvency cases, assets of liquidated banks, state-bank non-performing loans.
• Customs seizures: goods and commercial vehicles stored at customs, unclaimed after the statutory storage deadlines or forfeited to the state.
• Industrial and bulk lots: property complexes of state enterprises, share packages, scrap metal, amber, state reserve stock.
• Licences and quotas: special subsoil (mining) permits, fishing and mariculture rights, renewable-energy support quotas.

How the bidding works

You do not register with Prozorro.Sale itself: you pick one of the connected marketplaces (19 say they support foreign buyers), open an account and submit the document pack for that sale type, paying a registration fee plus a guarantee deposit before the application deadline. The usual format is a three-round English auction: bidders file a sealed opening bid, then three rounds of three minutes follow with a minimum increment set in the listing, and the highest sealed bidder moves last in every round. A hybrid Dutch format, where the price steps down and is then followed by sealed bids and a final move, is used when English auctions have failed or pricing is hard to establish. Small privatisation carries a 20% guarantee on the starting price and a registration fee of 0.2 of the minimum wage, with 7 days to sign the protocol, 20 to pay and 25 to conclude the contract. Large privatisation (starting value above UAH 250 million) uses a 5% guarantee and a fee of 10 minimum wages.

What to check before you bid

Lot descriptions, valuations and draft contracts are in Ukrainian only; the English pages explain the system, not the lots. Prices are in hryvnia and the listing states whether the starting price includes VAT. A foreign buyer normally needs a home-country registration extract legalised and translated into Ukrainian, a beneficial-owner declaration, financial statements and a declaration of no sanction-related restrictions; fees must be wired from the buyer's own account, and banks in FATF non-cooperative jurisdictions are refused. Private individuals who are not registered entrepreneurs cannot bid on subsoil-permit auctions, and anyone sanctioned or linked to Russia is barred. Assets stay where they are and each listing names the region and address, so check the location before bidding. Inspection is arranged by the organiser named in the listing, not by Prozorro.Sale, and the marketplace takes its own fee out of the winner's deposit: 4% of the sale price (capped at UAH 8 million) on privatisation lots, 5% on customs lots, 1% or 0.5% on subsoil permits.