Minister for Communities and Territories Development Oleksiy Chernyshov and Swiss Ambassador to Ukraine Claude Wild have launched a new Ukrainian-Swiss project UCORD (Ukraine’s Cohesion and Regional Development) with a budget of CHF 18 million (about EUR 17.2 million), aimed, among other things, at the improvement of public infrastructure in Ukraine, which is critical for the environment.
On the official Facebook page of the Swiss Embassy in Ukraine, it is specified that the UCORD project is synchronized with the adopted State Strategy for Regional Development until 2027, is designed for 12 years, and its total budget is CHF 18 million.
The key areas of support will be the institutional strengthening of the Regional Development Agencies, the improvement of environmentally critical municipal infrastructure (water supply, sanitation and waste management), as well as cultural initiatives to improve community cohesion.
The UCORD project will work both at the national level, supporting the Ministry for Communities and Territories Development, and at the level of regions and communities.
At the initial stage, the UCORD team will prepare a detailed project document and select target regions. The first four-year implementation phase will begin in September 2022.
Ukrainian banks’ cash exchange rates on 18/02/22
Source: Interfax-Ukraine
Ukraine in January of this year reduced export of intermediate goods made of carbon steel in quantity terms by 27.9% compared to the same period last year, to 486,479 tonnes.
According to statistics released by the State Customs Service, in monetary terms, export of intermediate goods made of carbon steel increased by 6.1% in January 2022, to $297.675 million.
The goods were mainly exported to Turkey (23.47% of supplies in monetary terms), Italy (20.64%) and Egypt (10.42%).
In addition, Ukraine imported 2,606 tonnes of such products in the first month of the year, which is 2.9 times more than in January 2021. In monetary terms, imports increased by 7.1 times, to $1.546 million. The goods were mainly imported from the Russian Federation (100% of supplies).
The introduction of an electronic health system (EHS) in medical facilities, regardless of their type of ownership, stimulates the development of healthcare in Ukraine and allows for efficient use of financial resources, according to participants in a roundtable talk held at the Interfax-Ukraine press center on Thursday.
At the same time, Oleksandra Mashkevych, Head of the Medical Directorate of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, emphasized the obligation to connect medical facilities to the electronic health system.
“Connecting to the EHS is one of the conditions for working in the modern world. If you are not connected to the EHS, then you actually drop out of the process, you don’t know how your country lives,” she said.
Mashkevych said that as of the beginning of the year, the EHS had more than 500 million electronic medical records created by doctors, more than 36.6 million e-prescriptions issued to patients for drugs under the Affordable Medicines program, and over 90 million electronic referrals, prescribed by primary and specialized care physicians.
“Every day the system is filled with almost 3 million medical records, tens of thousands of prescriptions, referrals, medical findings,” the expert stated.
At the same time, she recalled that from 2022, all medical facilities engaged in medical practice, regardless of their form of ownership, will work in the electronic health system.
“Soon all healthcare institutions in Ukraine will maintain medical records in an electronic database and registers. This is necessary to continue the changes that we started back in 2017, when we launched the healthcare reform,” Mashkevych explained.
In turn, Head of the Consultative and Diagnostic Center of Dniprovsky district of Kyiv Daniel Karabayev said that the effective work of the medical facility was largely ensured by the effectiveness of a medical information system (MIS).
“Thanks to cooperation with the medical information system Medstar, we have experience in creating an electronic management system for a medical facility. And today, our doctors do not just enter relevant information about patients, but have modern analytics, recent information, opportunities and leverage to influence certain processes,” he said.
An effective MIS that automates analytics makes it possible to effectively manage a medical institution, generate resources for its development and increase salaries for medical and non-medical personnel, Karabayev emphasized.
In turn, Olena Ambarna, Director General of the municipal non-profit enterprise Polyclinic Association of Kropyvnytsky City Council, which is also connected to the MIS Medstar, noted the advantages of working with the EHS.
“Our MIS allows us to compare the load on each doctor, which allows us to influence the process of treating patients. Considering the structure of our medical institution, I am able, thanks to the system, to move doctors from one institution to another. This would not be possible if I did not have a system, thanks to which this can be done easily without leaving the office,” Ambarna said.
According to her, thanks to the MIS used, the medical institution can effectively plan and calculate the work of both individual employees and the entire clinic, and contract for the most popular packages of medical services under the Medical Guarantee Program (MGP).
It was also noted that the Consultative and Diagnostic Center of Dniprovsky district of Kyiv and the Polyclinic Association of Kropyvnytsky City Council used the Medstar medical information system in their work with the EHS, which, among other things, allowed them to enter the top five in the rating of “leaders” of interaction with the National Health Service of Ukraine (NHSU).
In turn, the head of the subcommittee on health issues of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Health, Medical Assistance and Medical Insurance, Maksym Perebiynis, believes that the EHS will help control not only the quantity, but also the quality of medical services.
“There is still no full-fledged mechanism for monitoring the provision of medical services. It is the connection of medical institutions of any type of ownership to the EHS that is a very important detail. Some clinics are used to working in their own closed system, but we must understand that people should receive a high-quality transparent service,” Perebiynis believes.
He also stressed that Ukraine would maintain a strategic direction for reforming the healthcare system and the formation of a single medical space.
Ukraine’s GDP growth in 2021, according to preliminary estimates, will amount to 3.2%, which won’t compensate for the 4% economic decline in 2020, head of the Council of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Bohdan Danylyshyn has said.
The World Bank has lowered its forecast for Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2022 to 3.2%, and in 2023 to 3.5%, while in October last year it expected it to increase accordingly by 3.5% and 3.7%.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has downgraded its estimate of the growth of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022 from 3.8% to 3.4%, in 2021 – to 3% from 3.1%.
The deficit of Ukraine’s foreign trade in goods in January-November 2021 fell by 13.2% compared to January-November 2020, to $3.607 billion from $4.158 billion, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine reported.
The growth of consumer prices in Ukraine in 2021 accelerated to 10% from 5% in 2020 and 4.1% in 2019.
Inflation in the raw food group of goods in 2022 may range from 10% to 20%, which will lead to an inflationary jump to 8-10% and, in turn, will require anti-crisis measures, adviser to the Ukrainian president Oleh Ustenko has said.
The deficit of the general fund of the state budget of Ukraine in 2021 amounted to UAH 166.8 billion, while the plan was UAH 220.9 billion, and in December the deficit of the general fund was UAH 109.1 billion, the Ministry of Finance reported with reference to the operational data of the State Treasury Service of Ukraine.
The total state debt of Ukraine in December grew by 4.04% in U.S. dollars to $97.95 billion, in hryvnias by 4.43%, to UAH 2.671 trillion, according to data on the website of the Ministry of Finance, released on Wednesday.
Industrial production in Ukraine grew by 1.1% in 2021, while a 5.2% decline was recorded in 2020.
Ukraine in January-November 2021 sold industrial products (goods, services) worth UAH 3.185 trillion, which is 44.2% more than in January-November 2020 (UAH 2.209 trillion), including outside the country in the amount of UAH 920.471 billion.
Real wages in Ukraine in December 2021 increased by 11.9% compared to December 2020, and compared to November 2021, the growth was 21.5%.
The volume of construction work performed in Ukraine in 2021 increased by 5.1% compared to 2020, while the growth rate in 2020 compared to 2019, according to updated data, was 5.6%.
The transport enterprises of Ukraine in 2021 increased transportation of goods by 3.3% compared to 2020 – up to 619.9 million tonnes.
Since the beginning of the 2021/2022 marketing year (MY, July-June) and as of January 21, Ukraine has exported 36.08 million tonnes of grain and leguminous crops, which is 27.6% more than the figures for the same date of the previous marketing year.
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