KYIV. Jan 31 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Siemens business in Ukraine started growing from H2 2016 and in Q4 2016 it exceeded 10% year-over-year and compared to Q1 2016, Siemens Ukraine CEO and a member of the board of the European Business Association (EBA) Maciej Tomasz Zielinski has said.
“We are flourishing. There were more projects and incomes in the third and fourth quarters. What 2017 will be? Frankly speaking, I do not know. The forecast is that it would be better than 2016. Most of sectors where we are operating or even all have rallied,” he said at the EBA conference in Kyiv.
He said that industrial growth in 2017 would considerably exceed the figure of 2016 being 2.4%.
He said that the mining and metal sector and agro-industrial sector have grown most of all. He said that first in the past years capital expenses (CAPEX) projects started appearing in the mining and metal sector along with operating expenses (OPEX) projects. Earlier started projects are being unfrozen, including projects of large holdings.
Zielinski added that the serious growth is seen in automation in the energy and infrastructure sectors. He said that recently Siemens created a hub in Kyiv that is servicing software and startup projects in energy distribution, in particular, implementing the projects for Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He said that the company is expanding the team of engineers of the hub and had to increase salaries for skilled workers by more than 10%. He expects that salaries this year would grow by 13-15%.
Zielinski said that the situation in Ukrainian engineering sector that suffered a lot due to its attachment to the Russian market is improving.
