In 2025, construction will begin in Serbia on the largest food industry enterprise in decades—a corn starch processing plant. The project is being implemented by Amelo, part of the Moldovan agro-industrial group Trans-Oil.
Location and scope of the project
The plant will be built in the city of Sremska Mitrovica on the site of the former Checherana sugar factory. The total investment will amount to €35 million. The plant will be able to process up to 250,000 tons of corn per year, producing native and modified starch, as well as corn syrup for the food, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries.
Construction will begin in May 2025 and will last 18–20 months. The project partner is the Chinese company Myande Group, which specializes in equipment for starch production.
Once operational, the plant will create around 150 new jobs. Sremska Mitrovica Mayor Branislav Nedimovic noted that this is one of the largest investments in Serbia’s food industry in the last 40–50 years.
The new plant will increase domestic corn processing, reduce raw material exports, and increase the added value of products. This will strengthen Serbia’s position in the European market for starch and related products.
On May 20, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced a tender for the purchase of compulsory motor third-party liability insurance services, according to the Prozorro electronic public procurement system. The expected cost of the services is 156,903 thousand hryvnia.
No tender security is required. The deadline for submitting bids is May 28.
compulsory motor third-party liability insurance, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, TENDER
ARX Life Insurance Company (Kyiv) collected insurance premiums totaling UAH 81.551 million in January-March 2025, which is 3.12% more than in the same period last year. This was reported by Standard-Rating on its website in information about the update of the company’s credit rating/financial stability (reliability) rating at the level of “tsAA” on the national scale.
The amount of payments and reimbursements made by the insurer in the first quarter of 2025 decreased by 10.55% to UAH 15.216 million compared to the same period in 2024. Thus, the insurer’s payment ratio decreased by 2.85 percentage points to 18.66%.
The insurer’s acquisition expenses for the first quarter of 2025 decreased by 1.32% to UAH 42.991 million compared to the same period in 2024.
As of April 1, 2025, the company’s assets increased by 1.07% to UAH 379.145 million, equity grew by 4.80% to UAH 292.194 million, liabilities decreased by 9.74% to UAH 86.951 million, cash and cash equivalents increased by 44.32% to UAH 167.356 million.
Based on the results of the first three months of 2025, the companies received a net profit of UAH 13.395 million.
At the same time, RA notes that as of the reporting date, the insurer had made financial investments in the amount of UAH 202.09 million, consisting of government bonds and government bonds (92.52% of the portfolio) and deposits in banks with an investment-grade credit rating (7.48% of the portfolio).
ARX Life is part of the international insurance holding company Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. ARX Life is one of the top ten companies in the life insurance market in Ukraine.
The housing price index in Ukraine for January-March 2025 was 111.2%, while for the same period in 2024, the figure was 116%, according to the State Statistics Service (Gosstat). According to its data, in the primary market, housing prices slowed to 14.8% in the first quarter of 2025, compared to 17.6% in the first quarter of last year. Two-room apartments rose the most in price, by 15.1%. Prices for one-room and three-room apartments rose by 14.4%.
In the secondary market, prices slowed to 9.3% in January-March 2025, compared to 15.3% in the same period of 2024. Thus, prices for one-room apartments rose by 9%, two-room apartments by 9.7%, and three-room apartments by 9.4%.
According to the statistics agency, compared to the previous quarter, housing prices rose by 3.9%, with a 4.3% increase in the primary market and a 3.6% increase in the secondary market.
According to the State Statistics Service, in the first quarter of 2025, prices in the primary market rose by 4.4% for one-room apartments compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, and by 4.2% for two-room and three-room apartments. In the secondary market, prices rose by 3.7%, 3.5%, and 3.7%, respectively.
As reported, according to the State Statistics Service, housing prices rose by 12.7% in 2024.
The State Statistics Service noted that the figures do not include temporarily occupied territories and parts of territories where hostilities are (were) ongoing.
As part of anti-dumping investigations, duties are more effective for economic development, according to Pavlo Kachur, head of Ukrcement.
“There are two mechanisms for protecting the market: anti-dumping duties and price proposals. The difference between them is that the additional delta that equalizes prices in one case goes to the domestic budget, and in the other case goes to the foreign producer. In today’s situation, when every hryvnia of revenue to the state budget is very important, when this hryvnia is used for defense, when domestic consumption in Ukraine has fallen significantly, the mechanism of anti-dumping duties is much more patriotic, because it additionally fills the state budget,” he told Interfax-Ukraine on the sidelines of the conference ‘Trade Wars: The Art of Defense’ in Kyiv on Tuesday.
Kachur stressed that protecting the interests of Ukrainian producers in wartime is not only the right but also the duty of the state.
As reported, the Interdepartmental Commission on International Trade (ICIT) is reviewing anti-dumping measures on imports of cement from Russia, Belarus, and Moldova to Ukraine in connection with the expiration of their validity. Earlier, in 2019, the ICIT imposed anti-dumping duties on imports of cement clinker and Portland cement under codes 2523 10 and 2523 29 to Ukraine at the following rates: 57.03% on cement from Belarus; 94.46% on cement from Moldova; 114.95% on cement from Russia. The duties were imposed for a period of five years and extended for one year in 2024.
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