Partners news

Thursday, May 13

With traffic jams growing in Kyiv, the World Bank’s Board of Directors is to review on May 27 a $38 million mass transit loan designed to increase mobility in Ukraine’s capital. One third of the money would be used to extend the Metro across the new Podil Bridge to Troyeshchina, the Left Bank shopping and residential district. Another $16 million wil be spent constructing a 3...

A UIA flight from Kyiv Boryspil to Tel Aviv was rerouted to Larnaca, Cyprus Tuesday night after Israel’s main airport came under a Palestinian missile attack. After a three-hour delay, the plane landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport. In January 2020, two Iranian anti-aircraft missiles downed a UIA flight shortly after takeoff from Tehran air...

Wednesday, May 12

Separately, the European Investment Bank has approved a €58 million loan to improve vocational education in Ukraine. The money will help create up to 10 regional centers of excellence in vocational education and training in Ukraine. The money follows a similarly sized project under the EU4Skills program, funded sinc...

Dnipro River transportation is off to a strong start this year, increasing by 62% to 3.1 million tons during the first four months of this year, compared to January-April last year. Aided by a longer season, more vessels, and government incentives to reduce trucks, the number of barge trips doubled, t...

Ukraine’s first flights to Saudi Arabia will commence next month when Flynas, Saudi’s low cost carrier, starts flying three times a week between Riyadh and Kyiv Boryspil. The flight on an Airbus A-320 will take five hours, reports Avianews.

Wizz Air Abu Dhabi, a new unit of the Budapest-based low cost carrier, will start flights from Abu Dhabi to Odesa on June 5 and to Kyiv Boryspil on July 1. The Abu Dhabi-based airline will fly to Kyiv three times a week, using an Airbus A321neo. This long-range Airbus is too big to land on the runway at Kyiv Sikorsky, Wizz Air’s Kyiv hub.

UIA inaugurates flights next month between Kyiv Boryspil and Ras al-Khaimah, the fifth largest of the seven kingdoms of the United Arab Emirates. Ras Al Khaimah’s airport is a 40-minute drive from Dubai city and a three-hour drive from Abu Dhabi.

In a crackdown on pro-Russian political and business interests, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova has authorized high treason charges against two Rada members, Viktor Medvedchuk and Taras Kozak. In February, the Kyiv government seized the pair’s three TV stations, a chain of gas stations and oil pipeline. Yesterday Venediktova said that Medvedchuk and Kozak ...

Tuesday, May 11

Lithuania’s Modus Energy International has started arbitration against Ukraine, claiming €11.5 million in damages for last summer’s retroactive cutting of green tariffs. The company owns the Bolokhivsky solar parks in Zhytomyr.

Energy storage systems in Ukraine can receive $300 million in revenues a year , Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, chairman of Ukrenergo, predicted at a recent press conference, reports ExPro Consulting. Solar and wind power plant have production peaks and lows, necessitating storage system...

Ukrenergo lost $1 billion last year, a sharp turnaround from nearly $70 million profit in 2019. The state company says its core activity – power transmission — is profitable. But losses come from subsidizing electricity to low income households and from national rates that do not cover ele...

Direct flights from Tel Aviv to Uman for the annual Rosh Hashana pilgrimage? That could be the result of a recent decision to transfer 500 hectares from Uman’s military airfield to civilian use, Agriculture Minister Roman Leshchenko tells Interfax-Ukraine. Every September abou...

Drivers returning to work in Kyiv today will encounter a new, digitized system for parking fines. Using hand held terminals, parking inspectors are able to quickly check for nonpayment for parking and issue tickets on the spots. “The ticket can be quickly printed and left on the offending vehicle,...

This summer, the EU would allow visits by fully vaccinated travelers from third countries, such as Ukraine, under a formal proposal by the European Commission. Travelers will have to complete the vaccination sequence at least two weeks before travel, reports Avianews. Similarly, the EU is working on a syste...

Ukraine has signed contracts to receive a total of 42 million doses of coronavirus vaccines through the end of this year , Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said Friday night on Ukraine 24 TV. To cover Ukraine’s adult population, he said, delivery contracts need to be signed for 5 million more doses.

Thursday, May 6

According to the business activity expectations index (BAEI), Ukrainian businesses have downgraded assessments for their April performance and future prospects in response to the stricter quarantine and growing uncertainty (NBU). In April 2021, the index again moved below its equilibrium level of 50 points, to 46.9, down from 51.4 in March.

In April 2021, enterprises across most of the surveyed sectors reported worsened outlooks of their business performance. The indices of the industrial, trade and services sectors moved below their neutral levels. Meanwhile, construction companies reported optimistic expectations for the first time since September 2019.

Trading firms also revised their outlook of their performance as the sector’s DI dropped to 48.9 in April, from 52.2 in March. Respondents expected a decrease in the amount of goods purchased for sale. With firmer expectations of a rise in purchase prices, tradi...

The services sector was hit hardest by the stricter quarantine, significantly S . “Respondents expected a drop in the amount of services provided, the number of new orders, and the amount of services being provided, while also intending to raise their selling prices,” the NBU rep...

AV Hotel & Hub, Ukraine’s most innovative hostel with imported capsules that is modeled after the popular Japanese trend, has opened up a new location near the Golden Gate metro station . It is also greatly expanding its existing AV Hotel branch located at Bohdana Khmel’nyts’koho St, 58А in Kyiv to boost guest capacity.

Kyiv was visited by 116,000 foreign tourists in the first quarter of 2021 reported the press service of the Kyiv City Administration. The largest number of foreign tourists came to the capital from Belarus – 10,500 visitors. In second place are tourists from Israel &#...

Wednesday, May 5

Firefly Aerospace is a privately held aerospace company that provides space transportation services from low Earth orbit to the moon. Firefly offers launch, space travel and landing on the lunar surface using the Alpha, Beta, SUV and Blue Ghost platforms and participates in NASA space projects. In 2017, after bankruptcy, the company...

Tuesday, May 4

After a state visit to Poland on May 3, President Zelenskiy slammed western leaders for being “insincere” and refusing to provide enough money and vaccines. Writing on Facebook, he said, “The European Union is about equality. Not just statements, but real actions. And for equality, sincerity is necessary”

With no end in sight to the pandemic, which has left tens of thousands dead and threatens even more, Zelenskiy said “Ukraine was among those who did not ask, but, on the contrary, gave a helping hand” : our doctors traveled to different countries of the European Union to save the sick together with local exhausted doctors. He also mentioned the planes that Ukraine provided for the delivery of prote...

“Ukraine received too little of the promised vaccines, and I reminded everyone that equality is about concrete support when it is most needed. The pandemic began more than a year ago. And for seven years Ukraine has remained a real, not a metaphorical outpost of Europe. War takes our people, eats up our economy, and ravages our Ukrainian ter...

“And although we are not yet EU members, we are already being spoken to as equal members of the European family. Therefore, today Ukraine came to greet Poland with the Constitution Day on May 3 – the document that served as the basis of Polish democracy. And therefore Ukraine signed the joint declaration o...

Ukrainians purchased and registered over 10,000 new passenger cars in April, or over the next 3 years, Ukravtoprom has reported. The demand for new cars has increased by 11% since 2020. This is due to the low starting point caused by pandemic related restrictions in place last spring. The market leader...

Monday, May 3

Investors from the United Kingdom, the United States and the EU comprised the bulk of demand for the offering – 42%, 34% and 21%, respectively. Investors from Asia and MENA accounted for 3%.

Yuriy Butsa, the Government Commissioner for Public Debt Management, noted that despite the return to the trajectory of fiscal consolidation, Ukraine’s funding needs are still high compared to previous years. “Having successfully implemented a local borrowing strategy in the first quarter, we returned to international capital markets after stabilization to cover some of our foreign exchange needs this year...

Oschadbank will pay a record-setting dividend to the budget, the state-owned bank said in a press release to investors. Sergei Naumov, the Chairman of the Board of Oschadbank, wrote “The reporting year 2020 was full of turbulent events that shocked the whole wo...

Ukrainian Railways is under intense scrutiny by the Temporary Investigative Commission of the Verkhovna Rada, which said that the company has performed unsatisfactorily, VSK head and MP Yulia Grishina announced on Facbeook. The body intends to appeal to the Cabinet of Ministers to dismiss the company’s acting...

Fitch Ratings revises Ukrainian Railway’s Long-Term Issuer Default Rating, senior unsecured debt, and its SPVs on Rating Watch Negative, the agency announced on April 29. The change reflects the company’s weakened liquidity position, according to the agency’s assessments. As of April, Ukrainian Railway’s liquidity coverage ratio, calcu...

Farmak, a leading Ukrainian pharmaceuticals company, will donate $500,000 to the Kiev School of Economics (KSE) to fund a new campus and improve existing programs , the company said in a press release. “By supporting such projects, we are contributing to the achievement of the Global Sustainable Development Goals, one of the tasks of which is to improve t...

“Ukrainian business is entering a new level of corporate social responsibility, and this should become an example for others. Thanks to the support of companies such as Farmak, we are preparing the ground for a strong and innovative Ukrainian economy,” said KSE President Timofey Milovanov.

Friday, April 30

Concorde Capital’s Alexander Paraschiy wrote: “Vitrenko could be at least as efficient at the position of Naftogaz CEO as Kobolyev was, so there is no risk to Naftogaz operations with the top management replacement.”

Critics target what they see as Ukraine’s faltering commitment to running state companies on corporate lines .“Dismissal of Naftogaz CEO raises doubts over Ukraine’s corporate governance reforms,” headlines an Atlantic Council blog by Aura Sabadus, a regional expert on the energy industry.

Dragon Capital wrote in a note: “This breach of corporate-governance standards is likely to create a new point of tensions with international financial institutions and Ukraine’s other Western partners…Naftogaz is set to experience ...

The Rada moved forward yesterday, appointing Herman Halushchenko as Energy Minister, succeeding Vitrenko, who had held the job in an acting capacity for four months. For the last year, Halushchenko served as vice president of Energoat...

With Russia’s Rosneft cutting diesel supplies to Ukraine, traders plan to increase diesel imports in May from Belarus, Lithuania, Hungary and Turkey, Ukraine’s Economy Ministry reports after meeting with “key stakeholders of the oil and gas market.” Yesterday, two companies won tenders to supply diesel to Ukrzaliznytsia. In addition to using diesel...

More than 300,000 Russian soldiers, nearly one-third of the nation’s 1 million member military, took part in exercises near Ukraine this month , Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, said in a public briefing yesterday. He said drills involved 35,000 combat vehicles, 900 aircraft and 180 navy ships. Previous e...

Lviv has the highest average salary in Ukraine, the hryvnia equivalent of $1,130 a month, according to a survey of Ukraine’s largest cities by grc.ua, a personnel portal. Lviv presumably edged out Kyiv, the traditional leader, due to the high conce...

Passenger traffic was down by one third during the first quarter, compared to January-March of 2020, the State Statistics Service reports. The number of rides taken by passengers was down 30.5%, to 624 million. The number of passenger kilometers was down 35%, to 12....

Thursday, April 29

Yuriy Vitrenko starts work today as the new CEO of Naftogaz, reports the government portal. Yesterday, the Cabinet of Ministers fired Andriy Kobolyev, a 20-year company veteran, who had held the CEO post since March 2014. Kobolyev is credited with cutting corruption, but criticized for faili...

To fire Kobolyev, the Cabinet of Ministers suspended the Supervisory Board for two days, the body charged with personnel decisions. Next Wednesday, a search is to start for new Board members. Vitrenko, the former number two at Naftogaz, has won a 1-year contract. Since December, he has se...

This afternoon, the Rada is to meet to vote on the candidacy of Herman Halushchenko for the post of Energy Minister. Supported by the Rada Energy Committee, Halushchenko, is Vice President of Energoatom, the state company that runs Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants. Nuclear supplies half of Ukraine’s electricity....

Defenders of Kobolyev noted that despite last year’s loss, the company paid $5 billion in taxes – 17% of Ukraine’s tax receipts. Kobolyev leaves Naftogaz with $2 billion in cash on hand, a war chest to buy gas for the winter.

Objections swirl over the legal maneuver used to bypass the Board and fire an executive who was one year into a four-year contract. “This violates the charter of Naftogaz and violates our obligations, in particular, to the IMF to ensure the independence of Naftogaz,” said Inna Sovsun, a Rada Energy Committee member from the ...

The dismissal of Kobolyev “is legal manipulation” and “demonstrates a return to practice manual management of state enterprises,” reads a defiant statement posted by the company’s outgoing management on the Naftogaz Group Facebook page. The change at the top comes as Naftogaz was planning to issue a Eurobond. In this light, the ...

“Dismissed. Reappointed. Andriy gone. $2bn cash reserves in company,” one foreign member of the Supervisory Board emailed the UBN last night. “Prospect of developing serious new gas basin in Black Sea and others and were going to raise a bond issue next week – kil...

Kobolyev made no public comment yesterday about his dramatic fall. Vitrenko, his former deputy, said the CEO switch is a “logical” response to “inefficient management of Naftogaz Ukrainy.” “The state must be an active owner,” he said in an interview last night with I...