As of March 7, 2019, Ukraine has started sowing early grain and leguminous crops in seven regions. The crops had been sowed on 58,000 ha or 3% of the target.
According to a report of the Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry of Ukraine, spring barley was sowed on 34,000 ha (2%), wheat on 1,000 ha (1%), peas on 23,000 ha (7%) and millet on 500 ha.
In addition, fertilizer input on areas with winter crops in grain was finished on 4.6 million ha (60% of the target).
Fertilizers were input on 3.8 million ha with winter wheat (59%), on 43,000 ha with winter rye (38%) and 718,000 ha with winter barley (71%).
In addition, areas with winter rapeseeds were filled with fertilizers on 1.1 million ha (83%).
The ministry said that the logistics of agricultural products remains a bottleneck of Ukrainian exports.
“Therefore, there is a proposal and a common desire of the response team members [the interdepartmental response team in agricultural logistics] to transfer its work to the systemic track. In parallel with the current and urgent issues, we will work on a long-term development strategy and logistics efficiency in agriculture, and jointly worked out decisions and proposals will be submitted to the meetings of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine,” Acting Minister of Agricultural Policy and Food Olha Trofimtseva said.
According to her, among the key issues requiring strategic discussion are three issues: the predictability of operation or closure of low-efficiency stations and the possibility of alternative solutions; fair and transparent pricing; systematic vision of the formation of routes of transportation of agricultural products in 2019.
Kyiv is the leader in the number of opened IT vacancies in Ukraine where 46.21% of all vacancies are offered, followed by Lviv with 15.42% and Kharkiv with 12.74%, the founder and CEO of CleverStaff product IT company Volodymyr Kurylo has told Interfax-Ukraine, referring to the company’s database.
According to him, the share of Odesa accounted for 6.34% of opened vacancies, and Dnipro’s – 5.82%.
“The most popular jobs in all these cities are the front end developer, QA, devops, project manager and product manager,” Kurylo said.
According to CleverStaff, in the labor market, demand for Front End (JavaScript) developers has doubled, and for QA engineers (testers) it grew by 67%, now the pros in these areas are 37% of all opened vacancies.
The head of CleverStaff added: if we talk about the level of a specialist – junior, middle, and senior, then the offers also differ depending on the city, but the leading position is occupied by senior.
Commenting on the pace of demand for IT specialists, Kurylo said that job offers for .Net, PHP, iOS developers over the past two years have halved, for Android – increased three times.
“Based on the changes in the number of vacancies in the CleverStaff database, we can predict that within two years in Ukraine there will be a demand for 7,600 front end developers, 7,200 testers, and 4,600 Java developers,” the specialist said.
CleverStaff, founded in 2014 in Odesa, is a product IT company developing an all-in-one software for applicant tracking and recruitment automation.
Ukraine in January and February 2019 increased revenue from exports of electricity by 30.6% or $9.168 million compared with January and February 2018, to $64.847 million, including $34.093 million in February alone.
Hungary bought electricity worth $37.961 million, Poland $14.254 million, Moldova $9.441 million, other countries $3.191 million, Ukraine’s State Fiscal Service has said.
Over the period under review, Ukraine imported electricity worth $0.204 million, in particular, electricity imports from the Russian Federation were estimated at $0.196 million, from Belarus at $0.007 million, from Moldova at $0.001 million.
As reported, Ukraine in 2018 exported electricity worth $331.942 million. Hungary bought electricity worth $189.958 million, Poland $78.763 million, Moldova $53.144 million, and other countries $10.078 million. Exports of Ukrainian electricity in monetary terms in 2018 increased by 40.9% compared to 2017.
Ukraine increased electricity exports by 19.3% or 999.4 million kWh in 2018, to 6.166 billion kWh.
According to the forecast, Ukraine in 2019 plans to export 6.42 billion kWh of electricity, and this is slightly more than in 2018 (6.2 billion kWh).
One troy ounce=31.10 grams
The continuation of the trend towards the strengthening of the hryvnia that emerged at the beginning of the year in recent weeks has been maintained by a stable supply of foreign currency against the backdrop of a favorable external environment, according to the website of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU).
“The situation in the foreign exchange market was shaped by the following factors: a favorable external environment for Ukrainian exports, the forthcoming payment of annual taxes to the national budget, which stimulates businesses to sell foreign currency more actively, a weak growth of imports of goods and a low repatriation of dividends in foreign currency abroad, as well as net sales of foreign currency by the population,” the report says.
At the same time, according to the NBU, the inflow of foreign capital into government securities, which has been observed since mid-January, has now slowed down and does not play a significant role in strengthening the hryvnia exchange rate, the National Bank added.
In general, the NBU notes that fluctuations in the direction of strengthening that have been observed in recent weeks is a healthy market reaction to constant changes in the economic situation: under the influence of changes in the supply and demand balance, the national currency can both strengthen and weaken. In such circumstances, short-term forecasting for the hryvnia exchange rate is difficult.
