KIEV, July 22 - President Viktor Yanukovych has signed into law a bill to shorten the list of companies not to be privatized, excluding 10 owned by the Agriculture and Industrial Policy Ministries.

The document, which was published on the head of state's Web site on Friday, says that the companies stricken from the list of state-owned properties not to be privatized are: the Crimean production association Titan (Armiansk); the Zaporizhia titanium and magnesium combine (Zaporizhia); Vilnohirsk state mining and metals combine (Dnipropetrovsk region); Irshansk state mining and beneficiation combine (Zhytomyr region); and six Agriculture Ministry companies.

Parliament passed the bill on July 5.

According to the bill's explanatory note, the aim of the law is "to create conditions for raising private investment in enterprises in which it is economically unjustifiable for the state further to retain ownership, which will make possible to modernize aging production facilities, introduce the latest resource-saving technologies, and increase the competitiveness of domestic products."