The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine intends to intensify the School Bus program to purchase 1.5 thousand school buses from domestic producers over the next three years, Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal said.
“We plan to use a number of tools to help domestic producers in the near future. The first tool is public procurement. We will expand the list of categories of goods purchased from local producers. In particular, we are talking about expanding localization to defense procurement. (…) An additional incentive will be the intensification of the School Bus program. This is the purchase of 1.5 thousand buses over three years from Ukrainian manufacturers,” Shmyhal said at the Made in Ukraine forum in Kyiv on Monday.
For her part, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Yulia Svyrydenko said that the Ukrainian government will look for opportunities to increase budget funding for the School Bus program to load up on orders from Ukrainian manufacturers.
“We have an existing School Bus program. We understand that the capacity of Ukrainian producers is twice as large as the budgeted limit of our program. Of course, we will look for ways to increase it in order to load Ukrainian producers with orders. We need 1600 school buses in the country now,” she said at the forum.
As reported, in 2024, as in the previous year, the state budget allocated UAH 1 billion for the purchase of school buses.
At the same time, Ukrainian manufacturers noted that if the amount of the subvention is maintained, bus purchases may be reduced by 15-20% compared to 2023, given the rise in bus prices.
School buses are purchased with co-financing from the state budget and local budgets.
In 2023, local budgets spent UAH 971.6 million out of the UAH 996.6 million subvention provided, while local councils purchased 434 buses out of the planned purchase of 546 school buses by the end of 2023.
In Ukraine, school buses are produced by Cherkasy Bus, Chernihiv Automobile Plant of Etalon Corporation, and Zaporizhzhia Automobile Plant of UkrAVTO Corporation.
Export sales of Ukrainian wheat are steadily growing. Since the beginning of February, more than 2 million tons have been contracted, which could be a record volume of deliveries for the season. As of March, 1.4 million tons of wheat have already been sold.
This issue was discussed on February 20 during the weekly briefing organized by the analytical center of the First Agricultural Ukrainian Cooperative (FUAC), created within the Ukrainian Agri Council.
“Traders say that Indonesia is very actively involved in purchases of Ukrainian feed wheat. This Asian country has sky-high prices on the domestic market and is interested in importing grain. The demand price from Indonesia is USD260-265/t CIF. It is very profitable to export Ukrainian wheat to Indonesia. The fly in the ointment for these plans is the conflict in the Red Sea, where there is a high risk of shelling of the merchant fleet. This is still a systemic problem that negatively affects trade in the Black and Mediterranean Seas. The risk is holding back Ukrainian traders from fixing their positions in this direction. The market expects that in the second half of March, the passage of ships through the Red Sea may stop completely. A logistical solution would be to detour ships by sea through Africa, but this will raise the cost of freight by USD10-12 per ton,” was mentioned by the FUAC.
Ukrainian wheat continues to be the cheapest on most markets.
“Last week, Ukraine sold wheat with a protein content of 12.5% to Egypt at USD224 per ton for delivery to Egypt. For comparison, Russian wheat cost USD245 on an FOB basis. Ukrainian wheat is very cheap compared to other grains in the EU, Egypt and Turkey. The trade tries to keep prices low so that it makes sense to trade on many bases. Price gaps are large, which keeps the CPT market at low levels. Nevertheless, there are more and more sellers of wheat on FOB basis, many farmers are willing to sell for USD195 per ton at the Danube ports. At the same time, on CPT terms, wheat costs USD175-188 per ton, and by the end of the week, the price tags may lose another USD2 per ton,” added the analytical department of the FUAC.
Canada will provide additional assistance to Ukraine to ensure “resilience and recovery” in the amount of 129 million Canadian dollars and more than $40 million, the press service of the Canadian government reported.
This was reportedly announced by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is in Kyiv to mark the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is visiting Ukraine today with international partners to reaffirm our continued and unwavering support for Ukraine,” the Canadian government said in a statement on its official website on Saturday.
“The Prime Minister of Canada has announced new support for Ukraine’s efforts to build resilience and recovery,” the statement said. It provides for the allocation of 75 million Canadian dollars for demining, cyber support and intelligence support, 15 million Canadian dollars to help create the National Museum of the Holodomor Genocide of 1932 and 1933 in Kyiv, up to 39 million Canadian dollars for mental health assistance, food support and for the reconstruction and restoration of local communities.
It is also reported that more than $22 million will be allocated “in humanitarian assistance to support United Nations and Red Cross partners in providing critical assistance, including emergency medical interventions, protection services, shelter, water, sanitation and nutrition, and promoting compliance with international humanitarian law.” More than $18 million will be allocated to support various projects: “from demining to reducing threats from nuclear or radiological materials and chemical weapons, as well as combating disinformation.”
Earlier, it was reported that President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau signed a Security Agreement in Kyiv, which provides for the allocation of Canadian assistance in the amount of 3 billion Canadian dollars in 2024.
On Friday, February 23, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met with Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares.
“During our meeting, I thanked Jose Manuel Albares for Spain’s support and solidarity with Ukraine. Spain will prepare a new package of military assistance to Ukraine, which will include ammunition. We also discussed President Zelenskyy’s Peace Formula and the Global Peace Summit in Switzerland,” Kuleba wrote on social network X.
“We agreed that Ukraine’s accession to the EU is on the right track,” the Foreign Minister added.
Benchmark oil prices are falling on Monday morning after falling on Friday and last week.
The price of April futures for Brent on the London ICE Futures exchange at 78:11 Q4 is $81.33 per barrel, which is $0.29 (0.36%) lower than at the close of the previous session. Last Friday, these contracts fell by $2.05 to $81.62 per barrel.
Quotes for WTI futures for April in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) by this time decreased by $0.33 (0.43%) to $76.16 per barrel. At the end of the previous session, they fell by $2.12 to $76.49 per barrel.
Over the past week, both brands fell by more than 2%.
Traders are keeping an eye on the situation in the Middle East and are waiting for the OPEC+ meeting to discuss the extension of oil production restrictions for another quarter.
“We still expect OPEC+ to extend production cuts into the second quarter of 2024 and begin to gradually lift them only in the third quarter,” Goldman Sachs analysts wrote.
The bank believes that oil prices will fluctuate between $70 and $90 per barrel.
Meanwhile, data from the oilfield services company Baker Hughes showed that over the past week, the number of operating oil rigs in the United States increased by six to 503 units. Meanwhile, the number of gas rigs decreased by one to 120.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov and a government delegation have arrived in Ukraine on a visit, Bulgarian National Television (BNT) reports.
The delegation also includes the ministers of justice, environment and energy – Atanas Slavov, Yulian Popov and Rumen Radev, deputy ministers of defense and foreign affairs – Stanimir Georgiev and Tikhomir Stoychev, as well as the head of the Defense Ministry, Admiral Emil Eftimov.
Details of the visit were not disclosed.
