Polish Getin Holding S.A. (Wroclaw) on February 5 signed an agreement with a Ukrainian buyer for the sale of 100% of the shares of subsidiary Idea Bank (Lviv) and 100% of the shares of New Finance Service (Kyiv), Getin Holding S.A. has said.
According to a report on biznes.pap.pl, the parties plan to close the potential deal by September 30, 2021.
Before that the buyer will conduct due diligence the companies, and after a positive result of the due diligence the parties will proceed to agree on the terms of the potential transaction.
Getin Holding also reports that the company granted the buyer exclusive rights for negotiations until April 30, 2021.
Idea Bank (formerly Plus Bank) was founded in 1989. As of January 1, 2020, its sole shareholder was the financial group Getin Holding S.A. (Poland).
According to the National Bank of Ukraine, as of October 1, 2020, Idea Bank ranked 24th among 74 operating banks in terms of total assets (UAH 8.057 billion).
Transportation of grain by river in Ukraine in 2020 decreased by 27.3% compared to 2019, to 3.5 million tonnes, which is associated with a decrease in the harvest by 13%, to 65.4 million tonnes, a rise in the rail fleet of grain carriers and increased competition among road carriers, Andriy Muravsky, an expert in the river transportation industry, says.
In a review of the industry on Facebook, he pointed out that total shipments by river fleet last year decreased by 5.1% compared to 2019, to 11.8 million tonnes, and the decline in the transportation of grain and fertilizers was partially offset by an increase in construction cargo (more by 12.5%, to 5.8 million tonnes) and metallurgical products (more by 7%).
At the same time, fertilizers continue to enter river ports directly from Bulgaria or Georgia in the holds of river-sea class vessels, and their shipment is carried out to the berths of estuarine ports and to terminals up the Dnipro River, Muravsky said.
According to him, in 2020, competition intensified in offshore transshipment, for example, Nibulon operated the largest floating crane in Ukraine Nibulon Max for a full year. This reloader was launched in the spring of 2019 and allowed Nibulon to increase the volume of cargo transshipment by its own fleet to 4-5 million tonnes per year, the expert said. According to him, other shipping companies plan to purchase their own floating cranes to offer integrated logistics.
Muravsky also said that United Barge Company (UBC) in 2020, for the first time in Ukraine, carried out a ship-to-ship operation to reload sunflower oil from a barge to a sea tanker on the outer roadstead of Mykolaiv port, thereby reducing the freight costs of the entire vessel and was able to avoid calling to another port. Also, UBC for the first time in Ukraine fully loaded a sea tanker with oil from barges without using land terminals, the expert noted.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has raised the e-limit of investments abroad for individuals from EUR 100,000 to EUR 200,000 per year, the press service of the regulator has said.
The corresponding changes were approved by the decree of the NBU board of February 3, 2021 (No. 14), which was posted on the National Bank’s website and comes into force on February 5.
The report specifies that the e-limit has been increased for investments abroad, placing funds on their own foreign accounts, transferring funds under a life insurance contract and providing loans to non-residents.
“This decision in the direction of currency liberalization will not have a significant impact on the functioning of the currency market of Ukraine, including taking into account the fact that individuals have been able to buy non-cash foreign currency for more than a year without any obligations and grounds,” the press service said citing Deputy Governor of the NBU Yurii Heletii.
He noted that in 2020, individuals within the e-limit transferred about EUR274 million abroad, which is less than the average daily trading volume in the interbank foreign exchange market.
The NBU recalled that the complete removal of the e-limit for individuals to make investments abroad is one of the priorities of the National Bank, provided for by the roadmap of currency liberalization. At the same time, the regulator indicated that this will become possible only after the final adoption and implementation of a package of bills to counter BEPS (base erosion and profitshifting).
As reported, since December 18, 2019, the National Bank has increased the annual e-limit on individual foreign exchange transactions by individuals from EUR 50,000 to EUR 100,000 per year.
An overstated tariff for energy from renewable sources (RES) in comparison with the market rate leads to significant and problematic payments to investors for Ukraine, which are estimated at $ 10-20 billion until 2029, acting Energy Minister Yuriy Vitrenko has said.
“If to look at the difference between the feed-in tariff and the market price, at least now, and multiply this by conservative estimates of production from renewable sources and multiply this by the term of the feed-in tariff – until 2029, then the amount of compensation from the state budget to investors in green energy will be from $ 10 billion to $ 20 billion,” he said while discussing the economic strategy until 2030.
Vitrenko noted that the feed-in tariff is several times higher than the market price.
“For a developing country like Ukraine, $ 10-20 billion is a significant amount, which is a problem,” he stressed.
The minister also criticized the current system of payments through the energy system operator Ukrenergo, which has no interest in paying for renewable energy sources, since their uneven generation brings it additional problems. According to Vitrenko, such payments should be made through the state budget as a public good in the form of clean energy.
A number of European Business Association (EBA) member companies, which “have Chinese roots,” are concerned about the imposition of sanctions by Ukraine against the Chinese shareholders of PJSC Motor Sich and will temporarily refrain from investing, EBA Executive Director Anna Derevyanko has said.
Chinese investors have temporarily put on hold all the issues related to investing in the country, she said at a meeting of the Global Economic Review of Ukraine association, when its participants raised the issue of these sanctions and their possible consequences for trade and economic relations with China.
According to Andriy Horokhov, the director general of UMG Investments, in 2020 Ukraine was lucky with the conjuncture in agriculture and metallurgy, and a large part of the products of these industries went to China. He added that the Chinese market is also expected to grow in 2021.
“I understand for sure that you have to be more careful with a trading partner with a turnover of about $ 10 billion,” he said.
“If suddenly we make mistakes in this direction, then we will need to understand where we will compensate for our sales markets, given the situation in Europe and the United States and the uncertainty with the pandemic. I hope there will be wise and balanced decisions here, and people will professionally approach this issue,” he said.
Members of parliament (MPs) from the Servant of the People party intend to reintegrate Ukrainians with Russian passports from Donbas and Crimea, as well as Ukrainians working in Russia, in bills on dual citizenship.
“The main goal of our bill is to reintegrate our Ukrainians from the east and from Crimea, as well as our citizens who have Russian passports and understand the current situation in relations with the Russian Federation. They received these passports in different ways. Someone, like in Crimea, was forced to get a passport in order to work in Russia. There are estimated from 1 to 2 million of these people. We want to pull them out and give them the opportunity to ‘declare’ and live peacefully with these passports so that they are not persona non grata,” MP Oleh Dunda (Servant of the People faction) said at a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Tuesday.
At the same time, he said, the bill will help “shed light on our political class and their foreign passports.”
“One of those who used informally dual citizenship was our political class, who received passports of other countries and used them … as a tool where they hide money. And people did not know about this,” he said.
He added the bill “will put a barrier to the aggressor country in gaining access to government posts.”
Dunda also noted that the bill will eliminate many gaps in the legislative field of Ukraine, allowing civil servants to have citizenship of other countries.
“For some of our high-ranking officials, a ban has been established to have a passport of another state. But the same laws have not established anywhere that if they acquire foreign citizenship while working in the civil service, they are dismissed,” the MP said.
As reported, on January 25, MPs from the Servant of the People faction registered three bills that would allow Ukrainians to have dual citizenship.
In bill No. 4640, the authors propose to amend the law on citizenship, which provides citizens of Ukraine with the right to obtain citizenship (allegiance) of a foreign state without losing the citizenship of Ukraine.
The proposed changes also allow foreigners to obtain Ukrainian citizenship without renouncing the citizenship of their country.
In addition, it is proposed to introduce a declaration of the presence (absence) of foreign citizenship (allegiance) and keeping records of Ukrainian citizens who have citizenship of other states.
The bill also proposes to provide for the submission of a declaration of absence of foreign citizenship by persons who apply for election to elective positions or to the civil service, to serve in local government bodies, to serve in law enforcement agencies.
The explanatory note to the draft law says that one of the important innovations is the introduction of the concept of “aggressor state.”
