At a meeting of the faction “Servant of the People” with the participation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky nine candidates for new ministers were agreed upon, the candidacy of First Deputy Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga is proposed for the post of the head of the Foreign Ministry.
“A meeting of the faction was held…On the agenda – personnel renewal…President Volodymyr Zelensky joined us. Based on the results of the faction meeting, we have worked out a general picture of personnel rotations to strengthen the state: the Foreign Ministry – Andrei Sibiga,” the head of the Servant of the People faction, David Arahamiya, wrote in Telegram on Wednesday.
According to Arahamiya, Alexei Kuleba, deputy head of the Office of the President, is proposed for the post of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Regional Policy. “He will head the ministry as it works now. Subsequently, as it was conceived, it will be divided into infrastructure and regional policy areas,” Arahamiya said. He also said that Olga Stefanishina is proposed for the post of Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration – Minister of Justice.
Deputy Defense Minister Natalia Kalmykova is proposed for the post of Minister of Veterans Affairs, while Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Nikolai Tochitsky is proposed for the post of Minister of Culture and Information Policy.
They intend to appoint interim Minister of Youth and Sports Matvei Bedny to the post of Minister of Youth and Sports.
Also, according to Arahamiya, Deputy Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk is proposed for the post of Minister of Ecology.
The Ministry of Strategic Industry may be headed by the director-general of the Ukrainian Defense Industry JSC, German Smetanin.
According to the head of the Servant of the People faction, Oleksandr Kamyshyn will move to the presidential office, where he will continue to deal with the issue of arms and infrastructure. In addition, Irina Vereshchuk moves to the Office of the President, who will work as a specialized deputy head of the OP.
“Discussed the creation of a new institution in the government with the working title “Ministry of return of Ukrainians”. We are holding a discussion of candidates who could head it,” – wrote Arahamiya.
Ukrainian banks as of Wednesday issued 288 thousand cards, which will be charged compensation under the state program “National cashback”, said Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Economy of Ukraine Yulia Sviridenko.
“For two days our partner banks (of the state program “National Cashback”) – it is, in fact, all the largest banks in our state, issued a total of 288 thousand cards,” she said on the air of the national telethon ‘United News’ on Wednesday.
According to Sviridenko, more than 600 manufacturers have already joined the state program, registering 63 thousand goods in the system.
“At the time of the launch of the program, nine retail chains have already credited cashback, somewhere around 40 more are in the process of joining,” the first deputy prime minister said.
She recalled that the cashback program started on September 2 in beta testing mode, which is tentatively to last about a month.
As reported, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine at a meeting on August 20 approved the procedure for granting “National cashback”, according to which Ukrainians will be able to receive compensation for 10% of the cost of goods purchased by them. The maximum amount of cashback is 3 thousand UAH/month, the funds can be spent on medical and utility services, sports, movies, train tickets, donate to the AFU or buy war bonds.
Since the beginning of 2024, medicines produced in India have accounted for 8.3% of the total volume of medicines imported to Ukraine.
The State Service for Medicinal Products and Drug Control (Goslexluzhba) informed Interfax-Ukraine that since the beginning of 2024, 3213 series (32824807 packages) from 65 Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers have been submitted for state quality control, which makes up 8.3% of the total volume of medicines imported to Ukraine.
At the same time during 2022-2023 10924 series of medicinal products manufactured in India were submitted for state quality control, including 4715 in 2022 and 6209 in 2023, which is 54705914 and 51309132 packages respectively.
In addition, the State Service of Medicinal Products with reference to the data of the State Register of Medicinal Products reported that since the beginning of 2024 Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers have registered in Ukraine a little more than 100 drugs (excluding active pharmaceutical ingredients, API – IF-U), currently in Ukraine are registered 1999 drugs manufactured in India, in 2023 in Ukraine were registered 1895 Indian drugs, in 2022 – 1709, in 2021 – 1472, in 2020 – 1165.
Thus, the dynamics of registration of Indian medicinal products in Ukraine over the last five years is slowing down: if the number of registered medicinal products manufactured in India in 2021 was 26.2% higher than a year earlier, then at the end of 2023 – only by 10.9%.
INGO Insurance Company (Kiev) has launched a new insurance product, specially designed to protect children from accidents, including coverage of consequences of military operations.
According to the insurer’s information, the policy is available for children from 1 to 17 years old. It covers risks of injuries, disability and even fatal accidents, with the possibility of receiving the sum insured from UAH 100 thousand.
The policy is valid on the territory of the whole world, except for zones of active hostilities and border territories with the aggressor country. Parents can choose when the insurance will be relevant: round the clock, during school or kindergarten or during sports and training.
INGO Insurance Company JSC has been providing insurance services for 30 years. Since 2017, the main shareholder is the Ukrainian business group DCH.
World central banks in July, according to preliminary estimates of the World Gold Council (WGC), increased the amount of gold in their gold reserves by 37.1 tons.
The largest buyers were Poland (14.3 tons), Uzbekistan (9.6 tons) and India (5.4 tons). Jordan (4.3 tons), Turkey (3.8 tons), Qatar (2.3 tons), Czech Republic (1.6 tons), Egypt and Malta (0.1 tons each) also increased their reserves
Kazakhstan (3.9 tons) and Mongolia (0.7 tons) sold gold.
“Central banks have remained committed to hoarding gold in recent months. While the overall level of demand cooled slightly as the gold price continued to rise to new highs, it nevertheless remained positive,” WGC analyst Krishan Gopaul said in a review.
According to EastFruit analysts, the blueberry season in Ukraine in 2024 was unsuccessful for producers. The incredibly early flowering of blueberry plantations, followed by frosts, led to some yield reduction and damage to quality in some regions of the country, but in general, the harvest volume was higher than in 2023. And even though farmers had many problems with harvesting, the supply of berries on the market increased.
Against the backdrop of the ongoing military aggression against Ukraine, farmers also had a lot of problems with blueberry marketing. One of the main problems is the low capacity of the domestic market. Accordingly, domestic prices for blueberries largely depended on the efficiency of exports, which also had certain problems. After all, only a small number of blueberry producers can collect sufficient sales for direct export.
As a result, at the beginning of the season, blueberry prices plummeted to anti-record levels, as we wrote about in this article. We would like to remind you that in this article we will talk about prices only for blueberries of the highest quality, i.e. blueberries that can be sold both on the domestic and foreign markets. And even for these, as you can see in the graph below, prices were also extremely low.
It should be said that in the 2024 season, the early start of the harvest also led to an early end to the massive blueberry harvest. Therefore, for most farmers, the season was already over by mid-August, which allowed blueberry prices to recover somewhat and even exceed the levels of the 2022 season.
Read also: Blueberry sales season in Ukrainian farms will end earlier than usual
Nevertheless, if we take into account the average prices over the months, especially during the peak two months when up to 90% of the harvest is harvested, i.e. July and August, we see that the average price for blueberries in Ukraine in 2024 was the lowest for all years.
The following graph demonstrates the fall in blueberry prices in Ukraine
As you can see, the average wholesale price for premium blueberries in Ukraine during the peak months was 39% lower than the average for the six previous seasons (2018-2023) and 15% lower than in the not so successful season of 2023. At the same time, the sharpest drop in price to the average was observed in July, when the bulk of the blueberry harvest in Ukraine is harvested.
“To assess how significant the decline in blueberry prices is for farmers, several additional factors should be taken into account. Factor No. 1 is inflation, which was very significant even for the US dollar. Thus, every year the price reduction needs to be adjusted by another 4-5 percentage points to get a real comparable figure. The second factor is the growth of plantation productivity in most blueberry producers in Ukraine, which allows for a slight increase in production efficiency and partially compensates for the losses from lower prices. This is because most blueberry plantations in Ukraine are just entering full fruiting. However, it is already clear that a further decline in blueberry prices will make growing blueberries for small farms that do not have the ability to enter foreign markets directly far from as profitable as in 2018-2021, and some will even be at risk of loss,” says Andriy Yarmak, economist at the Investment Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Although the blueberry season cannot yet be considered completely over, as technically in certain seasons Ukraine continues to actively export and sell berries on the domestic market in September and even some volumes in October, in 2024 the situation is such that the interim results of the season will be very close to the final ones.
This year, prices in September and October may well be quite high, because despite the resumption of blueberry production in Peru, massive supplies of blueberries from this country will go to Europe late to the usual time. Nevertheless, blueberry production in Europe and competition in this market from third countries such as Morocco, Georgia and even African countries continue to grow, which will continue to put pressure on prices.
