China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd. (CHEC) on August 8, 2018, began dredging on the offshore maritime approach channel to Chornomorsk Port and in the operating area of the first boot basin of the Sukhy estuary. The dredging will allow large vessels with a draft of up to 14.5 meters, such as Capesize, deadweight up to 100,000 tonnes and containerships with a capacity of 8,000 TEU to the current and planned reconstruction of deep-sea quays, the press service of the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority (USPA) has said.
The dredging project was developed by the Infrastructure Ministry’s institute and ChornomorNIIIProject. It will deepen the approach channel from 14.5 m to 16 m and extend the approach channel from 1,400 m to 1,600 m. The width will remain the same – 150 m. Dredging of the water area of the first boot basic of the Sukhy estuary will increase the depth in its central part up to 15 m. The total amount of dredging of Chornomorsk Port will be about 2 million cubic meters, including more than 500,000 cubic meters in the approach channel and about 1.5 million cubic meters in the water area. It is planned that the work on the projects will take two to five months.
The cost of the work is UAH 404.1 million without VAT. Of this amount, UAH 87.1 million will be spent on dredging of the channel, and UAH 317 million on increasing the water area. To carry out dredging in Chornomorsk, CHEC mobilized a dredging fleet of 15 vessels. All of them have already arrived in the port water area. As previously reported, CHEC was selected to conduct dredging operations at the port of Chornomorsk as a result of open tenders in the electronic public procurement system ProZorro on March 13, 2018.
CHEC also conducts dredging in the port of Yuzhny. In May 2017, the Chinese company and USPA signed two contracts, one of which has already been completed three months ahead of schedule, and the second is 70% completed.
The volume of private money transfers to Ukraine in January-May 2018 increased by 30% compared to the corresponding period of 2017, to $4.5 billion, Head of the Council of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Bohdan Danylyshyn has said. “The volume of private money remittances to Ukraine grew to 8.4% of GDP in 2017 (according to the new NBU methodology). And it continues to grow rapidly this year (in January-May this figure was 30% higher than last year and reached $4. 5 billion),” he wrote on his Facebook page.
According to Danylyshyn, a new wave of labor migration from Ukraine is due to many factors, the most important of which are military aggression, a deep and long-term economic crisis, unemployment.
“The NBU inflation report for January 2018 said that the share of migrants in the population aged 15-70 is 8% … The scale of labor migration in Ukraine has become dangerously high for the future economic prosperity of the country,” he wrote. In his estimation, a strong external migration, including highly skilled workers, together with the population aging is a significant challenge for the state. “For example, the “brain drain,” in particular, means the loss of public resources invested in their education, the narrowing of industry, the deterioration of the business environment,” he said.
Ukraine as of August 8 had threshed 30.7 million tonnes of early grain and leguminous crops from 8.9 million hectares (91% of the forecast for these crops) with the yield being 34.3 centners per ha. According to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, farmers harvested 22.8 million tonnes of winter wheat from 6.1 million hectares (95% of the forecast) with the yield of 37.4 centners/ha, 285,000 tonnes of spring wheat from 87,000 hectares (44%) with a yield of 32.9 centners/ha, 3 million tonnes of winter barley from 865,000 hectares (99%) with the yield being 35 centners per ha, 3.4 million tonnes of spring barley from 1.3 million hectares (82%) with a yield of 25.5 centners/ha, and 737,000 tonnes of peas from 406,000 hectares (94%) with a yield of 18.1 centners/ha.
The country also harvested 278,000 tonnes of rye from 107,000 hectares (72%) with a yield of 26.1 centners/ha and 151,000 tonnes of oats from 68,000 hectares (34%) with a yield of 22.3 centners/ha.
In addition, farmers threshed 2.5 million tonnes of winter rapeseeds from 965,000 hectares (99%) with a yield of 26.2 centners per ha and 45,000 tonnes of spring rapeseeds from 22,000 hectares (34%) with the yield standing at 20.6 centners/ha.
This autumn Ukraine seeks to start using first TE33A locomotives that would be produced for PJSC Ukrzaliznytsia under a cooperation agreement signed with U.S. General Electric (GE), Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said. “This autumn, we are starting to get a new rolling stock – according to plans for joint production of General Electric. We lost a lot (of rolling stock) in the occupied territory. However, the company is involved, and things are moving,” the press service of the Cabinet of Ministers reported on Wednesday morning, citing Groysman.
The prime minister also drew attention to the fact that simultaneously with the renewal of assets, the state-owned company’s management is being renewed, shadow deals and manual control, which was observed in the past, is being eliminated.
“The billionaire company, Ukrzaliznytsia, was entangled in all sorts of schemes and knots. We begin to unwind, calculate enemies and bring the situation out of the state of decline,” Groysman said.
As reported, the framework agreement between Ukrzaliznytsia and GE envisages a 15-year partnership in updating and modernizing traction rolling stock, the first stage of which is the delivery to Ukrzaliznytsia under the terms of leasing of 30 new GE TE33AC diesel locomotives with a localization level of 10%.
Primary registration of electric cars (new and used) in Ukraine in January-July 2018 grew by 64% year-over-year, to 2,490 cars, the Ukrautoprom association has reported. The share of used cars exceeds 80% – in January-July it was 84%. The Nissan Leaf remained the most popular make in Ukraine: 1,621 cars of this model were registered in Ukraine from January to July 2018. The BMW i3 with 182 cars ranked second in terms of the number of registrations and Tesla Model S was third with 123 cars.
The top ten on the primary market of electric cars in January-July 2018 also included: Mercedes-Benz B Electric Drive – 78 cars; Smart Fortwo – 69 cars; Tesla Model Х – 57 cars; KIA Soul EV – 53 cars; Volkswagen е-Golf – 52 cars; Toyota RAV-4 EV – 46 cars; and FIAT 500е – 37 cars.
In 2017, the primary market of electric passenger cars in Ukraine grew 2.3-fold, to 2,697 units, and the share of used cars was 85%, while in 2016 – 51%.
