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Turkish Airlines’ economy unit AnadoluJet starts flying to Ukraine tomorrow with an Ankara-Kyiv Boryspil flight. At the end of April, AnadoluJet starts flying from Kyiv and from Odesa to Dalaman, on Turkey’s southwest coast.

With the EU blocked for most Ukrainian tourists, Egypt and Turkey are the huge beneficiaries, according to Boryspil’s flight schedule for April, reported Avianews.com. The ranking of flights listed for April is: Sharm el-Sheikh – 305 flights; Hurghada, Egypt – 194; Antalya, Turkey – 157; Istanbul – 130; Dubai – 102; Tel Aviv – 98; Amsterdam – 88; Minsk – 60; P...

A record number of charter flights are scheduled to fly from Ukraine to Turkey in early June, Turprofi, the tourism professional news site reportsed, citing research of Ukrainian Association of Travel Agencies. For the week of June 7-13, 326 flights from nine Ukrainian cities are to go to Turk...

Starting from Thursday, Chinese tourists can enter Ukraine without visas and stay for up to 30 days, according to a Decree signed last week by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The experimental visa-free regime is to last six months, until Sept. 30. All visitors to Ukraine need to show a negative corona...

Ukraine plans to open a Consulate General in Houston this year, said Volodymyr Yelchenko, Ukraine’s outgoing Ambassador to the US, speaking to the US-Ukraine Business Council last week. Scheduled for last year, the opening was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic....

Antonov Airlines’ mammoth An-124-100 Ruslan cargo aircraft, recorded nearly 8,000 hours of air time last year, a record for the 32-year-old Kyiv-based company, Mikhaylo Kharchenko, Antonov’s Director told the Center for Transportation Strategies. In the most recent urgent, outsized delivery, three Antonov Rusl...

As Ukraine struggles with its ‘third wave’ of coronavirus infections, daily hospitalizations hit a record 5,052 yesterday morning, Health Minister Maksym Stepanov has reported on Facebook. This is more than double the peak of 2,000 hospitalizations recorded during the last wave, four months ago. With a ‘British variant’ spreading...

Paperwork delays should be cleared by early April to allow use of 215,000 Sinovac vaccines that arrived in Kyiv last week from China. Separately the first vaccines under the UN’s COVAX initiative are to arrive in early April, Stepanov told Ukraina 24. Ukraine has paid for 1.5 million AstraZeneca vaccines from India, but delivery was...

Swept up by the EU’s COVID-19 upsurge, half of Ukraine’s population presently reside in the ‘red zone’ quarantine areas, Ukraine’s Health Ministry has reportsed. In this strictest form of quarantine are: Kyiv City and 10 regions — Cherkasy, Chernivtsi, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Sumy, Zhytomyr a...

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• #ukraine

“I don’t rule out that the whole country may be put on lockdown,” Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, told the BBC on Wednesday. Hours later, on Thursday morning, the Health Ministry announced a record daily death toll for the on...

In Kyiv, mass transit could be halted if people do not wear masks, Mayor Klitschko warned on Facebook on Wednesday. Yesterday, Klitschko confirmed 1,267 new coronavirus cases, 57% of them women. Over the last year, 3,198 people have died in the capital of the pandemi...

India is suspending delivery of 75% of Ukraine’s order of 1.9 million AstraZeneca Covishield vaccines, in part because of a coronavirus upsurge in India, and in part because of “defamatory statements about India as a manufacturer of medicines,” Mykhailo Radutsky, Servant of the People Chair of the Rada...

Health Minister Stepanov is struggling to restore deliveries of 1.5 million vaccines contracted with the Serum Institute of India. The Minister for Culture, Oleksandr Tkachenko, has accused Russia of waging a disinformation campaign, and India’s Embassy has complained to Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry.

Yesterday, the first load of 1.915 million doses of China’s CoronaVac was air shipped to Ukraine, reported the website of Ukraine’s Embassy in China. The vaccine was produced by China’s Sinovac Biotech. Ukraine will receive it first batch of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in April, said Oleksandr...

By July 1, Ukraine is set to receive 2.3 million doses – of the 8 million secured – from the World Health Organization’s COVAX facility. S&P Global Ratings has calculated that Ukraine will vaccinate 3% of its population by this summer.

Riding the private health care wave, Horizon Capital announced yesterday that its EEGF III has made a ‘successful exit’ from its 2-year investment in Dobrobut, Ukraine’s largest private healthcare provider. The Horizon investment helped Dobrobut make two M&A investments – the purchase of Doctor Sam and Boris. Purchasers of the Horizon’s investment are Dobrobut’s two major shareholders: Igor Mazepa, C...

For new business worries, uncertainty about vaccines against COVID-19 (69%) and continued lockdowns (57%), and employee safety (47%) rank the concerns of executives polled by the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine. In the...

Looking ahead, 60% of companies have positive expectations for 2021, expecting revenues to go up. Over 30% of businesses plan to hire new employees, and 39% plan to increase investments. With the uncertainties over public health and transportation, 82% have switched to hybrid work, a combination o...

“For 43% of member companies that express restrained optimism about doing business and potential investment in Ukraine in 2021, key obstacles remain,” said Andy Hunder, AmCham president. “The business community is urging the government to ensure the rule of law, protect the population from COVID-19 and fight corruption.”

Registrations of new companies fell by 20% yoy last year, a drop blamed on the pandemic and quarantine measures, according to recent report by YouControl, an online database. In 2020, the state registered 54,000 new companies. At the same time, 10,000 compan...

Ukraine’s big four state-owned banks cut their total non-performing loan portfolio by 22%, or $3.1 billion, last year, reported the Finance Ministry. This reduced the non performing loan portfolio to UAH 310 billion, or 57.4% of all outstanding loans. To cut into the bad loan mountain, more than 94,000 new ...

The average Ukrainian spends one hour a day watching YouTube videos, The average Ukrainian spends one hour a day watching YouTube videos, reported Google, owner of the video hosting service. Last year, the number of Ukrainian YouTube channels with 100,000 subscribers g...

Fashion magazine Marie Claire Ukraine has switched from Russian to Ukrainian, making its Spring 2021 edition its first Ukrainian-language issue. “There is a superstition about writing on fashion in Russian because of the longstanding influence of these magazines’ head offices, ...

The government intends to offer 8,000 UAH ($285) cash payments to private entrepreneurs and employed individuals impacted by the three-week strict quarantine on businesses, said the Prime Minister, Denis Shmyhal. “The state is ready to pay the relevant individual entrepreneurs and employees of enterprises who have suffered as a result of the introduction of quarantine restr...

According to Odile Renaud-Basso, President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, State-owned enterprises stand to gain the most from radical reforms. In Kyiv she told reporters “The EBRD and Ukraine have been strong partners for almost three decades now. Ukraine is a top three investment destination for the EBRD. In the past two years alone, the Ba...

EBRD investments focus on strengthening energy efficiency, energy security, boosting agricultural and industrial potential, building solid infrastructure and strengthening the financial sector. “Our work is underpinned by and supports Ukraine’s aspiration of European integration. In order to achieve healthy and fast economic development, there must be a radical reform of SOEs, including the ...

Among sectors with the highest potential are: agriculture, energy, transport, information technology. “There is a huge potential in Ukraine, especially in its people and its youth. Pursuing the reform agenda is key for the economic development. Structural weaknesses remain and weigh on the pace of eco...

“I hope that in 10 years’ time Ukraine will be country guided by the European Union values and standards, with a stronger rule of law, greater social cohesion and trust between citizens, greener economy and more gender and income equality.”

MHP, the largest poultry producer in Ukraine and a national blue-chip stock, plans to pay $30 million in dividends for 2020 or $0.2803 per share, the company has announced. “Given the current challenging market dynamics, with a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 3.66 as at 31 December 2020 (above 3.0, after which certain restrictions come into e...

The Ministry of Community and Territorial Development may receive a EUR 100 million loan from the European Investment Bank to modernize street lighting in Ukraine. “The proposed project should cover the entire territory of Ukraine. It provides for the implementation of measures for the restoration, reconstruction and construction of external lighting netwo...

The Ministry of Health has reported another death related to the Covishield vaccine, which is licensed by AstraZeneca and made in India.” On the morning of March 24, the pharmacist of the military hospital pharmacy in the Chernivtsi region died. The man received the vaccine on March 15,” the Ministry announced on Facebook. This is the s...

A strict nationwide quarantine may be imposed if the spread of Covid worsens, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) Oleksiy Danilov told BBC Ukraine. “The Council will soon hold a meeting regarding the epidemic. However, it is not known whether the introduction of a lockdown will be considered. So far, all decisions remain to be made by the regions...

According to the Deputy Chief of NBU, Dmitry Sologub, failure to secure IMF funds this year will increase inflation and devalue the hryvnia. “Refusal to cooperate with the IMF will most likely lead to an increase in debt service costs, a reduction in the inflow of foreign investment, and pressure on the foreign exchange reserves of t...

After four years of growth, the overall GDP rate declined by 4% in 2020 to $151 billion, according to the State Statistics Service. In 2019, Ukraine’s GDP grew by 3.2%; in 2018 by 3.4%; in 2017 2.5%; in 2016 2.5%, after a massive 9.8 % decline in 2015 and 6.6% decline in 2014.

Officials project 4.6% growth in 2021 . Ukraine’s economy peaked in 2013 with a GDP of over $183 billion and has yet to recover to this level in the past 7 years.

MHP, the largest poultry producer and a national blue-chip stock, expects to increase dividend payouts by 2.6x in 2021 due to growing revenue fueled to rising chicken prices , said Denis Belyi, an analyst at Freedom Finance. “Due to the resumption of growth in world prices for chicken meat, the 2021 financial year reflect a positive outcome for MHP agricultural holding, w...

“MHP shares are traded not only in Ukraine, but also on the London Stock Exchange, and it is one of the most undervalued companies whose shares are quoted on international trading floors. This is due to the fact that the price of the company’s main product – chicken was ...

MHP’s revenue in the first nine months of 2020 decreased by 6% – to $1.41 billion. The agro holding received $109 million in net loss against $276 million in net profit for the same period in 2019. This is due to a foreign exchange loss of $191 million in the period of January to Se...

UNIT.City is partnering with AWT Bavaria Ukraine to launch the U.go service, which offers electric vehicle car sharing. Kyiv will be the first city to test the new car-sharing model. For now, the service can be used by residents and employees of the UNIT.City Park, who have a driver’s license and have more than t...

“When UNIT.City is completed, it will be a place without cars. We will have intercepting hubs, and all residents of the park will be able to use a service such as U.Go. For business, it will be relevant during the day, for those who will live here – in the ...

Ukrainian Railways workers are planning a large-scale strike on March 31 to protest low wages and poor working conditions during the global pandemic, Interfax-Ukraine reported citing recent union announcements. The warning was announced by the trade union of railway workers and transport builders of Ukraine. Whether there will be a continuation dep...

Workers at Kryvyi Rih Mining and ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih are also starting protest campaigns for an increase in wages by 30%. “The workers of the AMKR enterprise took industrial action today. The protesters note that the action is preventive and, if the administration of the enterprise does not sit down at the negotiat...

“With the onset of spring, protests will only intensify. Wages are low. Employers do not comply with the law. Their priority is profits and surplus profits. With a further rise in prices and inflation, people will inevitably participate in protests more and more,” a union leader told Interfax-Ukraine.

Bees Airline, a Ukrainian low-cost carrier is offering charter and routine flights, after it received its flight license to operate flights on 31 routes, said the State Aviation Service of Ukraine in a recent announcement.

Foreigners entering Ukraine now need a negative PCR test for coronavirus, said the Health Chief Maxim Stepanov in a recent press briefing. “Foreign citizens and stateless persons entering Ukraine will need a certificate certifying a negative PCR test result for coronavirus, regardle...

President Zelenskiy has signed off on the creation of Ukraine’s Bureau of Economic Security (BEB), the Presidential press office has reported. “The main function of the Bureau of Economic Security will be analytical work, not law enforcement. The Bureau will analyze the beneficiaries of finan...

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• #economyofukraine
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Ukraine’s SBU security service will lose the power to investigate crimes relating to corruption and organized criminal activity. “This will allow the SBU to focus on performing tasks that are really directly related to the security of the state, focusing on counterintelligence activities in the economic sphere,” the...

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• #ukrainegovernment

The Bureau of Economic Security is to be the sole government agency responsible for combating economic and financial crimes. BEB will assume the current powers of the Security Service and the State Tax Police. “According to the law, the Bureau of Economic Security is the central body of executive power, which is entru...

BEB powers include: “identifying risk zones in the economic sphere by analyzing structured and unstructured data; assessment of risks and threats to the economic security of the state, development of ways to minimize and...

BEB is not a law enforcement agency and its functions include “drawing up analytical conclusions and recommendations for government bodies in order to increase the efficiency of their management decisions on the regulation of relations in the economic sphere.”...