Ukraine as of July 8, 2019 had threshed grain and leguminous crops on an area of 3.4 million hectares (35% of the forecast), harvesting 11.3 million tonnes of grain, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food has reported on its website.
According to the ministry, farmers collected 7.3 million tonnes of wheat from an area of 2.1 million hectares (32% of the forecast), 3.6 million tonnes of barley from 1.1 million hectares (43% of the forecast), 402,000 tonnes of peas from 187,000 ha (66% of the forecast).
In addition, farmers continue harvesting winter rapeseeds, having threshed 1.1 million tonnes from an area of 519,000 hectares (40% of the forecast).
According to the ministry, farmers from six regions, namely Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, and Ivano-Frankivsk, have started harvesting rye, and as of July 8 had already threshed 2,000 tonnes from 600 ha (0.5% to the forecast). Agrarians of four regions, including Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Mykolaiv, and Odesa, began harvesting oats, having threshed 1,500 tonnes from 1,000 hectares (0.4% of the forecast).
The net revenue of Join Up! tour operator in 2018 totaled UAH 65.741 million, the tour operator has told the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine.
“According to the financial statements [on consolidated revenue], the net sales revenue of Join Up! tour operator for 2018 is UAH 65.741 million,” the committee said in a decision dated June 21, 2019.
The Antimonopoly Committee fined Join Up! UAH 1.5 million for spreading untrue information regarding what airlines the tour operator will cooperate with to carry tourists.
The owners of Join Up! tour operator are Oleksandr Alba and Yuriy Alba.
The Kyivstar mobile communications operator has allowed paying for a subscription to sticker packs in Viber (part of Rakuten Inc.) via own Smart-Money financial service for prepaid subscribers, the companies have said in a joint press release.
“This is the first experience of the collaboration of the messenger and the mobile payment service, which was implemented in Ukraine,” the press service of the mobile operator said.
Users of the Smart Money service will be able to subscribe to all stickers in Viber for UAH 20 per month and access immediately to all collections of stickers, which has more than 500 pictures.
Usually, Viber users pay for each sticker pack separately, but one time at a price of UAH 52-54 per one sticker pack.
The service can be used by Kyivstar prepaid subscribers who have installed the Smart Money application, since payments are made from a mobile account.
“Launching a joint project with Viber is an important step for us. We are confident that such a partnership will help develop a culture of payments with mobile money and thus help citizens of Ukraine to strive for a cashless economy,” Senior Business Development Manager at Kyivstar Olena Suvorova said.
According to Rakuten Viber, Ukrainians make about 4 million calls to Viber every day and send 11 million messages.
“For Viber, this is the first experience of such cooperation in Ukraine,” Senior Director for Business Development in Europe, Africa and Middle East Atanas Raykov said.
Kyivstar also said that today, since the launch of the service in September 2018, 6.4 million transactions has been carried out, and the most popular services were: payment for telecommunication services, national lotteries, online purchases and payment for public transport.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will issue a loan of EUR 20 million (two tranches of EUR 10 million) to Dniprovska agribusiness group, one of the largest poultry producers in Ukraine, for the reconstruction and expansion of the slaughtering house. According to the bank’s website, the total cost of the project is EUR 33.8 million, of which EUR 23.8 million will be invested in 2019-2020, another EUR 10 million in 2020-2021.
According to the EBRD’s website, the project will enable the company to obtain necessary certification for entering the EU market.
As reported, in March 2018 the EBRD issued $5 million to Dniprovska group for the construction of a biogas plant. The total project cost was $5.85 million.
Dniprovska agribusiness group is engaged in poultry farming, plant growing, and processing industrial crops.
British-based IWG Plc, which provides rental services for office space and temporary workplaces, plans to open a nine-storey office space under the Spaces brand in the Maidan Plaza business center (Kyiv). “In 2019, the first center of the global network of creative space for work Spaces will open in Kyiv. The Maidan Plaza business center was chosen as the location. The space of 6,100 square meters for 600 workplaces will occupy nine floors at once. The official opening of the first stage of the premises is scheduled for August,” according to a press release from Spaces in Ukraine.
According to the report, one of the key components of the Spaces concept are also regular events – both business and lifestyle. The goal is not only to provide new opportunities for development, but also inspire the creation of ideas, encourage the use of non-standard approaches in solving daily operational problems, and promote networking.
The Spaces brand was founded in 2006 and is managed by IWG. The Spaces premises are located in 39 countries of the world (including the Netherlands, the United States and Australia) and 150 locations. The format of Spaces offices is designed to promote the active development of business – from entrepreneurs and startups to major corporations.
The network of branches of Ukrainian banks in the second quarter of 2019 decreased by 2.1%, or 180 offices, to 8,269, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has reported. According to its data, the leaders in the number of closed branches in April-June of this year were Oschadbank with 102 offices, Prominvestbank with 31 offices, and PrivatBank with 26 branches.
For state-owned Oschadbank or PrivatBank this accounted for 3.9% and 1.3% of the entire network, while for Prominvestbank, controlled by Russia’s VEB, according to the quarterly results, the chain decreased by 2.3 times, to 24 branches.
In addition, the number of Ukrsotsbank branches fell by 23, this was due to its merger with Alfa-Bank, the number of branches of which increased by ten over the quarter. In total, their network comprised 270 branches in the middle of this year.
Among the banks that increased the number of branches in April-June, the leader is FUIB, which extended its network by six new outlets.
