Official rates of banking metals from national bank as of July 28
One troy ounce=31.10 grams
Luxembourg opens an entrance for Ukrainians in accordance with the recommendations of the EU Council, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said.
“Luxembourg is opening for all types of travel of Ukrainians in accordance with the recommendations of the EU Council. One more EU country, with which we are restoring full validity of visa-free travel,” Kuleba said on his Twitter microblog on Tuesday evening.
Kuleba said that before buying tickets, it is necessary to check all the conditions for entering the countries according to the interactive map of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Energoatom in the first half of 2021 received UAH 1.124 billion of net profit against UAH 2.651 billion of net loss in January-June 2020.
According to the company’s financial statement for the first half of 2021, its net income from product sales decreased by 9.4% compared to the same period in 2020, to UAH 24.011 billion, gross profit – by 2.8 times, to UAH 2.734 billion.
As follows from the notes to the interim financial statements of Energoatom, as of June 30, the total amount of accumulated losses of the company stood at UAH 43.511 billion, having decreased since the beginning of the year by 1.5% (by UAH 638.570 million).
The positive net worth of Energoatom as of the indicated date increased by 8%, to UAH 130.554 billion.
The document lists a number of positive factors that contributed to the improvement of the company’s financial indicators in the first half of the year. One of them is an increase from January 1, 2021 of the ceiling price at which Energoatom sells electricity to state-owned company Guaranteed Buyer for the needs of the population from UAH 10 to UAH 150/MWh.
In addition, from February 1 to April 9, Guaranteed Buyer repaid UAH 4.125 billion of debt to Energoatom by attracting loans from state banks to Ukrenergo.
Another positive factor is the forecast electricity balance for 2021 approved by the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine. It provides for an increase in the production of electricity by nuclear power plants by 2.08% (by 1.533 billion kWh) compared to 2020, to 75.233 billion kWh.
Travel services imports, which fell sharply in 2020 due to the pandemic, will grow by almost 1.5 times this year, to almost $7 billion, Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Yuriy Heletiy said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
“Travel services imports will not reach pre-crisis levels this year, but there will be an increase compared to the last year, when international travel was restricted due to lockdowns. We forecast an increase this year to nearly $7 billion from $4.7 billion in 2020, and it will exceed the pre-crisis level in the next year,” he said.
Earlier, the National Bank estimated travel services imports in 2019 at $7.5 billion.
At the same time, Heletiy said that the growth of remittances of labor migrants continues, which did not stop even the last year, and following the five months of this year amounted to 11%.
“According to our forecast, remittances of labor migrants this year will increase by 11%, to about $13.3 billion due to the economic recovery of the countries of destination of labor migrants and simplification of border crossing conditions due to the acceleration of vaccination rates,” the NBU Deputy Governor said.
U.S. Charge d’Affaires in Ukraine Kristina Kvien returned to Ukraine after a two-week vacation, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine said.
“Welcome back, Chargé d’Affaires Kvien! And thanks to Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, who filled in as Chargé the last two weeks,” the embassy said on Twitter on Tuesday.
The Azerbaijani service company SOCAR AQS is considering the possibility of investing in Ukrainian subsoil, Head of the State Service for Geology and Subsoil Roman Opimakh said following a working meeting in Kyiv on Monday.
“Representatives of SOCAR AQS are interested in investing in Ukrainian subsoil because of the presence of significant potential of both hydrocarbon deposits and raw materials for the production of batteries for electric cars and electronics in our country,” Opimakh wrote on his Facebook page
According to him, the parties agreed to continue the dialogue with the aim of introducing and implementing joint business projects.
Opimakh also invited Azerbaijani partners to pay attention to the Investment Atlas of a Subsoil User, created by the State Service for Geology and Subsoil, containing vacant subsoil areas with deposits of strategic and critical minerals, as well as a data-room of secondary geological information filled with descriptive information about subsoil use objects, land plots within the contours of deposits, and also geological reports.
According to Interfax-Azerbaijan, SOCAR AQS was established in 2007 by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Nobel Oil Services and Abşeron Qazma Şirkəti as a joint venture providing comprehensive drilling and well management services. Nobel Oil Services is the main shareholder of SOCAR AQS.
The main activity of SOCAR AQS is the provision of services and work on the design and planning of wells, drilling oil and gas wells, drilling directional wells, drilling horizontal wells, well completion, workover, sidetracking and drilling of branched wells.
