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The Finance Ministry managed to keep lowering rates for short term government bonds at yesterday’s weekly auction, the Ministry reported on Facebook. The all-hryvnia auction yielded the equivalent of $168 million, less than half the volume of last week. According to numbers posted on the Ministry’s website, short term bonds settled at these rates: 6-month, down 17 basis points, to 9.03%; 1-year bonds, down 5 basis points, to 10.62%; 1.5 year bonds down 8 basis points, to 10.96%. Staying unchanged

The Rada will soon vote on the final passage of the “Google” tax – a tax that would impose a 20% VAT tax on provision of Internet services by foreign companies to residents of Ukraine. The law, which could render $100 million in annual tax payments to Ukraine, would apply to such foreign tech giants as: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Wargaming Group, Bloomberg, Alibaba, and Booking.com. “These are large foreign international companies operating and earning money in Ukraine. They receive

Services that would be taxed include: sale of images or texts, e-books; sale of audio, video, games, gambling; providing paid access to electronic resources; provision of cloud technologies for data placement; supply of software and updates to it; and, providing advertising services on the Internet.

Last week’s US entry ban on Ihor Kolomoisky and his immediate family “is the beginning,” Iuliia Mendel, spokeswoman for President Zelenskiy, said in an interview posted yesterday on the YouTube channel of Olesya Batsman, editor-in-chief of Gordon. Last week in an article for Atlantic Council, Mendel wrote that Zelensky is prepared to take on the oligarchs “everywhere from the energy and banking sectors to politics and the media.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will address the fourth Ukrainian-German Economic Forum, an investment and trade conference that will take place on line on Friday, March 19. According to Ukraine’s Embassy in Germany, experts will discuss: discuss industrial development and digitalization, energy and renewable energy, food and agriculture, and logistics and infrastructure. Registration can be made here, on the site of one of the organizers, the German-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce, or AHK Ukraine.

Kyiv plans to receive 5 to 7 container trains a month from China this year, which is double last year’s rate, reported Ukrzaliznytsia. The trains take about 15 days to travel from China and are unloaded at the Kiev-Lyski logistics terminal on the Left Bank.

Poland’s PCC Intermodal S.A. plans to triple container trains between Poland and Ukraine, to three per week this year, according to the company’s website. Starting last year, the company picks up and delivers containers from Mostiska, the Lviv region border city where the European and Russian gauge rails meet. Across Ukraine, container traffic grew last year by 11% yoy, to 425,000 containers.

Ukraine should invest in achieving universal fluency in English among young people, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, said yesterday at a “Ukraine 30” forum on culture, media and tourism. “The English language should be used from kindergarten to the end of secondary schools,” Danilov said. “When the youth is fluent in English, that’s the precondition for the independence of this country.” In Scandinavian countries, about 60% of people under 35 are fluent in English. In

Casino gambling licenses have been issued to five hotels, Danilo Hetmantsev, Head of the Rada’s Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs policy, said after a briefing Tuesday by Ivan Rudy, Head of the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries. Hetmantsev said that half of the nearly $5 million in total licenses have been paid. Separately, the Commission posts on its website that it issued a license Tuesday to allow Parimatch to resume betting activities in Ukraine. A bookmaker

Turkish Airlines’ lowcost unit, AnadoluJet, will start flights to Ukraine for the first time on March 30 2021 with a flight between Ankara and Kyiv Boryspil. Flying a Boeing 737-800, Anadolujet schedule includes four services a week. Pegasus Airlines, another Turkish lowcost airline, already operates on the Kyiv-Ankara route. Separately, Ukraine International Airlines commences a new route to Nevşehir, the regional capital in Central Anatolia on March 25. The direct flights from Kyiv Boryspil will improve tourist access to Cappadocia.

Last Tuesday, Turkey reopened restaurants for inside dining, ending a long ban. Ukrainian tourists can travel to Turkey without a visa if they have a negative coronavirus test result taken no earlier than 72 hours before departure. About 9% of Turkey’s population have received a first coronavirus vaccine shot.

With coronavirus hospitalizations spiking to the highest level since the pandemic appeared in Ukraine one year ago, Ukrzalysnitsia is temporarily ceasing passenger train service to the three most effected regions: Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi and Zhytomyr. Ticket sales for the Ivano-Frankivsk service stopped one week ago. Sales of tickets for the passenger service to Chernivtsi and Zhytomyr stop on Sunday.

Yesterday morning, the Health Minister Maksym Stepanov reported that 3,486 people were hospitalized with Coronavirus in the previous 24 hours. During the same period, 7,235 new cases were registered, and 185 deaths recorded. Earlier on Tuesday, the infection toll was 5,336. In a campaign to soften opposition to vaccinations, Stepanov, his deputy Viktor Liashko, and President Zelenskiy were publicly vaccinated this week. In public opinion polls, 40-50% of people interviewed say they will refuse to be vaccinated.

By November, all Ukrainians will have had the opportunity to be vaccinated, Stepanov said Monday on ICTV’s Freedom of Speech talk show. Starting next week, the daily vaccination rate is to hit 10,000. “By summer, it would be 5-6 million a month,” he told reporters yesterday. So far Ukraine has received from India 500,000 doses of the Swedish-British AstraZeneca vaccine. Ukraine has also ordered 17 million more doses from India. Stepanov said yesterday he fears the 1.9 million Sinovac doses

Ukrainians can sign up for vaccinations through the Diia website, or by calling the Health Ministry’s hotline: 0 800 60 20 19. Although international donors are paying for a large portion of the vaccines through the COVAX program, expatriates and any other foreign nationals will only be able to get vaccinated by paying for it. The Health Ministry predicts vaccines will become commercially available in Ukraine by this summer.

Cargo handled by Ukraine’s ports was down 24% yoy in January-February, to 20.6 million tons, reported the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority. Exports dropped by 23%, to 16.1 million tons. Imports dropped by 28%, to 3 million tons. The big winter drop was a 38% fall in grain exports, to 5.6 million tons.

High grain prices may partly cancel out falls in volume shipments. In the eight months since the grain marketing year started July 1, grain exports fell 22%, reported the Economy Ministry. Corn is down 30%, to 13.8 million tons. Wheat is down 17%, to 13.7 million tons. Barley is down 2%, to 4 million tons.

Yet Black Sea grain prices are at seven-year high: corn at $260-267 a ton, wheat at $281-288 a ton, and barley at $256-$263 a ton, reported Reuters. In the last marketing year, Ukraine exported 57 million tons of grain. This year, the government predicts exports could decline to 45.4 million tons – a 20% drop. Dragon Capital wrote: “The recent surge in global grain prices should at least partially offset weaker volume exports.”

Kernel, the world’s largest sunflower oil producer, is halfway through a $169 million project to build cogeneration heat and power plants at its six oil seed crushing plants. The company already receives half of its energy from renewable sources.

MHP Agroholding, Ukraine’s largest chicken producer plans to open 2,000 Myasomarket stores across Ukraine in the next three years. Part of a shift from a ‘raw materials’ producer to a higher value ‘culinary company’. MHP will franchise the meat market stores, 2,000 shawarma DönerMarket outlets, a network of ‘Secrets of the Chef gastro-studios’ and an R&D department. Olena Kosyuk, Head of Research & Development and spouse of the Company Chairman Yuriy Kosyuk, said: “We will be able to develop new