Passengers carried in Jan-August of 2021, in mln
The European Commission has sent Ukraine the second tranche of macro-financial assistance in the amount of EUR600 million under the emergency assistance program, said EC President Ursula von der Leyen.
“Today we paid Ukraine a new tranche of macro-financial assistance in the amount of EUR600 million,” she wrote on Twitter on Friday.
“We have also offered an additional loan of EUR9 billion for Ukraine in 2022,” added von der Läen.
She also noted that the EU will work on a platform for the renewal of Ukraine.
The EU Council was reported to have expeditiously approved a € 1.2 billion macro-financial assistance package in February this year, with two disbursements of the first tranche of € 300 million in March.
Sales of bicycles and electric scooters on the website of Ukraine’s largest online retailer Rozetka have doubled since the beginning of May, the company’s press service told Interfax-Ukraine.
“Apart from the annual growth in sales of goods in the spring, this season it is due, among other things, to difficulties with the supply of fuel for cars,” said Rozetka co-founder Vladislav Chechetkin.
He said that the peak of purchases of bicycles and electric scooters on rozetka.com.ua fell on May 9-15.
“Probably, the first week of the month our customers hoped that the fuel shortage would end soon. However, the situation dragged on, and the weather on the street has improved in the meantime. Demand for environmentally friendly transport shows that Ukrainians Chechetkin believes.
He also said that since mid-May, the demand for courier delivery has grown.
The concentration of land in one hand by leasing land plots from their owners over the years of independence has led to the degradation of the Ukrainian agricultural industry, this problem can be solved by legally operating associations of landowners, consolidating in matters of growing and selling crops, head of the Ukrainian Association of Land Owners Roman Holovin said.
At a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Thursday, he noted that the main problem of land lease relations in Ukraine is the concentration of land in one hand. Thus, 10% of the country’s agricultural land is concentrated in the ten largest Ukrainian tenants.
In addition, the user of the land, who is not its owner, is not interested in investing in the land asset, as well as in the further processing of agricultural products and the development of animal husbandry, the expert explains.
Holovin specified that the launch of the land market in 2021 did not change the situation for the better for the land owner, but continued the concentration of land in the hands of tenants. With its appearance, the rent for agricultural plots did not increase, the owner of the land did not receive the right to dispose of the land without the permission of the tenant, and the lease agreement is almost impossible to terminate. According to the expert, due to lack of prospects and intimidation by tenants, land owners are increasingly deciding to sell land for next to nothing.
“Ukraine found itself in a situation of a dead end in the implementation of land relations, which led to the decline of the agricultural sector, gave rise to socio-economic and socio-political contradictions and conflicts. Such land relations do not exist in any civilized country,” the head of the union emphasized during the press conference.
Holovin noted that associations of land owners are capable of resolving this issue, which consolidate joint efforts to sell their crops at the highest possible price, resolve the issues of production services and hiring subcontractors, accounting and tax administration. Such public independent management of land through participation in the community of land owners created by Holovin makes it possible to receive profit from the use of land by its owner 2-2.5 times more than non-public (shadow) agriculture, or management through the registration of the land owner as a private entrepreneur.
The community of land owners is a legal entity created by uniting land owners to consolidate the use of land plots in independent agricultural activities, at the same time socially significant for its participants, the society and the state as a whole. The organization is a single taxpayer of the fourth group and a value added tax payer, which implies a special taxation regime for the community and the owner of the land entering it.
“The community does not pay income tax, which means that the owner of the land does not pay it either. The land owner participating in the community does not pay the minimum tax liability (UAH 1,500-2,000 per ha of land), land tax (UAH 300-600 per ha), personal income tax (UAH 2,000-8,000 per ha of land) in the form of a tax liability and does not pay social security tax (22% of income received),” the expert specified.
At the same time, he clarified that community members have the opportunity to sell their crops at market value with VAT refunds, while individual farmers who grow agricultural products without state registration are forced to sell them 40-50% cheaper due to the lack of documents confirming their ownership of the crop.
Also, the community has the right to VAT refunds on the purchase of goods and services, pays a single tax in the amount of 0.95% of the normative monetary value of the cultivated land. In addition, it maintains personal accounting records for each participant, which means accounting for personal expenses and personal profits.
According to Holovin, the above tax and administrative preferences allow a land owner who independently cultivates land through participation in the community to have a significant advantage over illegal land owners and landlords. This way of managing allows him to receive an average of UAH 12,000-20,000 of profit per hectare of land.
According to his calculations, with a crop value of UAH 28,000/ha, the land owner can receive UAH 8,000-12,000 per hectare by optimizing taxation and accounting, and with a crop value of UAH 42,000/ha, he will earn UAH 14,000-22,000/ha.
“In the system of self-management, the income of millions of land owners is significantly increased, control of the agricultural sector and its centralized support are ensured, and most importantly, the country’s food security is guaranteed,” he summed up.
The Austrian company iC consulenten ZT GmbH will develop a master plan for the restoration of Trostyanets (Sumy region), Mayor Yuriy Bova said.
“We agreed with iC consulenten ZT GmbH to work together on the concept of restoring the future of Trostyanets – a safe, environmentally friendly, comfortable city,” the mayor said on Facebook after a meeting with representatives of the company in Vienna.
According to him, the company will do the work for free. The development will take three to four months.
iC consulenten is an engineering and consulting company that is part of the Austrian iC group. The company is represented in more than 100 countries. Started working in Ukraine in 2013. Among the projects of iC consulenten in Ukraine are the technical supervision of the construction of the Zaporozhye bridge, the implementation of traffic management systems in Lviv, technical support for the project of energy modernization of municipal buildings, etc.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky announced his intention to build another Mriya aircraft, dedicating this project to the memory of the pilots who died in the war, including during the defense of Mariupol.
During an online meeting with Ukrainian students on Thursday, he recalled that at one time there was an idea to build a second copy of this unique aircraft.
“We wanted to build it, we needed 800 million dollars. I turned to the President of Turkey with a proposal to build the 2nd MRIYA, but we did not find the money,” he said,
“But in this case, this is not a matter of money, it is a matter of ambition. Ukroboronprom, the Antonov team contacted us. This is a matter of the image of our state and all the excellent professional pilots who died in this war,” Zelensky also said.
He called them “heroic people”. “How much they did, today you can already say how much they saved the lives of people who remained in Mariupol, especially at Azovstal … How many pilots gave their lives to bring everything there, from weapons to water. And how many wounded they took from there A large number of these people died heroically,” the president said.
“Building MRIYA for the sake of the memory of heroes is the right state position,” Zelensky stressed.
The world’s largest transport aircraft “Mriya” was destroyed during the battles for the airport “Gostomel” at the end of February 2022.
An-225 “Mriya” is an aviation giant, which holds records for the transportation of the maximum commercial cargo and the longest and heaviest monocargo in the history of aviation, carrying capacity.
