The official presentation of the project “Governance and Local Accountability (Hoverla) Activity” with a budget of $74 million, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), took place in Kyiv.
“After the successful local elections in 2020, when Ukrainians elected representatives of their newly united regions and communities, now is the time to start a new phase in decentralization. Decentralization reform can ensure that all levels of Ukraine’s leadership represent the best modern democratic practices,” U.S. Charge d’Affaires in Ukraine Kristina Kvien said at the project presentation in Kyiv on Monday.
She said that one of the key next steps in decentralization is to adopt an amendment to the Ukrainian Constitution. “This is a long debated step and I encourage you all to work together to complete it,” Kvien said.
In turn, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal confirmed that for the irreversibility of the reform, it is important to introduce and consolidate in the Constitution of Ukraine the appropriate changes regarding a new model of local government, the territorial organization of power, built on the principles of decentralization and subsidiarity.
“Regarding the government’s action program in decentralization, I want to say that in order to complete the reform, the government is introducing a number of important measures to decentralize power and reform local government. Relevant bills for their implementation are already being developed,” he said.
According to the head of government, we are talking about the delineation of powers and the creation of appropriate material financial conditions for their implementation, reformatting local government administrations into prefectural-type agencies, improving the forms of inter-municipal cooperation as an effective mechanism for cooperation of territorial communities, introducing a new municipal service, improving the forms of attracting residents to making managerial decisions and determining the procedure for resolving issues of the administrative territorial structure.
“The government focuses on strengthening the institutional and financial capacity of communities and their development,” Shmyhal said. The prime minister said the pilot areas of the project have already been selected, Volyn, Lviv, Poltava, and also add there is a need to expand the geography of the project to other regions and other communities.
Chief of the Hoverla project Gabriel Abraham said the project has already identified the first 25 partner communities from Lviv, Poltava and Volyn regions.
“During the implementation of the project, Hoverla plans to use replicable models and mechanisms to increase support for two more communities with the involvement of partners, associations of local government, other civil society actors and government agencies,” he said.
Abraham said the project is designed for five years, until 2026. “The activities of Hoverla are based on three principal goals. The first goal is to support policies and laws. The second goal is to support local officials. The third goal is to support the interaction of citizens with their officials,” the project manager said.
Dragon Capital investment company has completed the acquisition of a new A class Viking business center in Lviv, the press service reported. “This is our second business center in Lviv and the 14th in the Dragon Capital portfolio of office real estate in Ukraine,” CEO of Dragon Capital Tomas Fiala said.
The business center, located at the intersection of Zelena and Pimonenko Streets in Sykhiv district of Lviv, was commissioned in August 2021. The object consists of two sections (9 and 12 floors) with a total area of 18,700 square meters, and includes a parking lot for 102 cars.
The business center was built according to the “green” BREEAM certification standards.
Dragon Capital is one of the largest investment groups in Ukraine in the field of investment and financial services, providing a full range of investment banking and brokerage services, direct investments, asset management for institutional, corporate and private clients. The company was founded in Kyiv in 2000. One of the key activities of Dragon Capital is investment in the real estate market.
The commercial real estate portfolio is managed by Dragon Capital Property Management. As of September 2021, it manages 31 commercial real estate objects, including 14 office objects, six retail real estate objects and 11 logistics complexes, with a total area of 778,000 sq m.
Diplomatic relations between Ukraine and Russia are limited only to consular services, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to the Republic of Turkey Vasyl Bodnar said on the air of the Dom television channel. “Relations between the countries [Ukraine and Russia] are coming to naught, and are limited only to meeting these consular needs,” he said.
However, Ukraine did not break off diplomatic relations with Russia, because no country agreed to represent Kyiv’s interests in Moscow, although “this decision should have been made back in 2014, when the active phase of hostilities started.”
“But at the same time, millions of Ukrainians are in Russia. Then they were working, and now for various reasons. And for the most part, our diplomatic presence there is focused on consular work. This means that consuls provide our citizens with documents, visit them in prisons, and there are several thousand, and plus, the political hostages of the Kremlin from Crimea, this is the representation of our interests in courts, in other institutions,” he said.
Bodnar mentioned Georgia, which broke off diplomatic relations with Russia after the 2008 war, represented by Switzerland.
“We carried out a ‘probing’ of positions, none of the countries represented in Moscow agreed to represent our interests, given the amount of work that would have to be done to ensure the interests of our citizens,” the diplomat said.
Bodnar said now the diplomatic presence between the countries is at a low level: there is no ambassador of either Ukraine in Russia or Russia in Ukraine.
He also said that, most likely, such representation will only decrease.
The total public debt of Ukraine in August 2021 in U.S. dollars decreased by 0.5%, or by $440 million, to $92.53 billion, the Ministry of Finance said on its website.
According to the ministry, in hryvnia terms, due to the slight strengthening of the hryvnia, the national debt decreased by 0.6%, or by UAH 14.28 billion, to UAH 2.485 trillion.
The Ministry of Finance specified that external debt in August also decreased by 0.5%, or by $290 million, to $54.49 billion, including direct – by 0.3%, or by $120 million, to $45.41 billion.
According to the ministry, in August, state guarantees on loans from Ukreximbank increased by UAH 4.58 billion, to UAH 10.85 billion, as a result of which the domestic state-guaranteed debt also increased by UAH 4.63 billion, to UAH 41.42 billion. However, due to the redemption of government bonds, as a whole the aggregate domestic public debt in the past month decreased by 0.5%, or by UAH 5.11 billion, to UAH 1.022 trillion.
In general, since the beginning of the year in dollar terms, the total state debt of Ukraine has increased by 2.5%, or by $2.3 billion, while thanks to the strengthening of the hryvnia to UAH 26.86/$1 from UAH 28.27/$1, in hryvnia terms it has decreased by 2.6%, or by UAH 66.5 billion.
Main trade partners of Ukraine in % from total volume (export from Ukraine to other countries) Jan-June 2021
SSC of Ukraine
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree that changed the composition of the National Investment Council on Monday, September 27.
According to decree No.488/2021 released on the presidential website, the following officials were included to the National Investment Council’s staff: Chairman of the Board of Directors of VEON Ltd. (Kingdom of the Netherlands) Gennady Gazin; chief representative of the Polish state oil and gas company “PGNiG S.A.” in Ukraine (Republic of Poland) Ireneusz Derek; Infrastructure Minister of Ukraine Oleksandr Kubrakov; First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, Economy Minister Oleksiy Liubchenko; President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Odile Renaud-Basso; Deputy Head of the President’s Office of Ukraine Yulia Svyrydenko and Vice President of the European Investment Bank Teresa Czerwińska.
According to the decree, the following officials were removed from the National Investment Council: former member of the supervisory board of NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy Yulia Kovaliv; former Infrastructure Minister Vladyslav Krykliy, former Economy Minister Ihor Petrashko, former President of the EBRD Suma Chakrabarti.
The decree comes into force on the day of its publication.
