PASSENGERS CARRIED IN JAN-MARCH OF 2021, IN MLN
The Board of Directors of Ferrexpo with assets in Ukraine has approved the early repayment of its outstanding pre-export finance facility (PXF facility) the agreement on which was signed in 2018. As at December 31, 2020, the group had $257 million of debt drawn on its PXF facility.
The company said on Wednesday that repayment is to take place today, while earlier repayment was scheduled to take place quarterly between 2020 and 2022.
Early repayment of this facility reflects the strong performance of the group’s operations, including recent growth in both the group’s production volumes and product quality, following the recent completion of investments throughout the group’s operations, representing prudent cash management practice.
The total wage arrears in Ukraine in May of this year fell by 6.1%, and as of June 1, 2021 amounted to UAH 3.351 billion, and since early 2021 they grew by 28.3%, the State Statistics Service said last week.
According to the service, the amount of wage arrears at enterprises that stopped filing reports during 2019-2020 amounted to UAH 166.1 million on the same date.
As reported by the statistics authority, a reduction in wage arrears in May 2021 was recorded in Luhansk (by 73.7%), Volyn (by 49%), Lviv (by 21.7%), Donetsk (by 17.5%), Kirovohrad (by 9.5%) and Chernihiv (by 2.9%) regions.
At the same time, an increase in wage arrears was seen in Khmelnytska (by 36.8%), Zakarpattia (by 19.8%), Cherkaska (by 14.5%), Kherson (by 12.7%), Zaporizhia (by 12.6%), Ivano-Frankivsk (by 11.7%), Vinnytsia (11.3%), Zhytomyr (10.5%), Rivne (8.3%), Dnipropetrovsk (7.4%), Kyiv and Ternopil (6.4%) %), Odesa (5.2%) regions and Kyiv city (0.7%).
The State Statistics Service said that among economic sectors in May 2021, wage arrears grew in in the field of administrative and support services – by 21.9% (to UAH 17.93 million), financial and insurance activities – by 20% (to UAH 0.23 million), agriculture – by12.9% (to UAH 74.52 million), in real estate transactions – by 12.5% (to UAH 41.04 million), education – by 12.5% (to UAH 20.59 million), in wholesale and retail trade – by 11% (to UAH 40.26 million), professional, scientific and technical activities – by 7% (to UAH 274.27 million), at transport, warehouse and courier enterprises – by 4.8% (to UAH 193.72 million), in the field of informatization and telecommunications – by 4.2% (to UAH 15.91 million), and construction – by 2.4% (to UAH 84.14 million).
At the same time, in the field of art, sports, entertainment and recreation, wage arrears decreased 10% (to UAH 1.74 million), in industry – 9.6% (to UAH 2.506 billion), in the field of temporary accommodation and catering 7.7% (to UAH 1.89 million), healthcare – 3.7% (to UAH 69.72 million), public administration, defense and compulsory social insurance – 2.3% (to UAH 5.38 million).
The Ukrainian national football team beat the Swedish national football team with a score of 2:1, reaching quarter-finals of the European Football Championship 2020.
The Ukrainian national football team beat the Swedish national football team with a score of 2:1 and advanced to quarter-finals of the European Football Championship, where it will play against the England national football team, which beat Germany on Tuesday. The match will take place in Rome.
The Ukraine-Sweden match took place on Tuesday June 29 in Glasgow, Scotland.
The Ukrainians opened the scoring in the 27th minute. Oleksandr Zinchenko scored on a pass of Andriy Yarmolenko. In the 43rd minute, Emil Forsberg equalized the score.
The winning goal was scored by Artem Dovbyk, it was his first goal for the national team a few minutes before the end of extra time.
CHAMPIONSHIP, EUROPEAN FOOTBALL, FOOTBALL, QUARTER-FINALS, SWEDEN
A number of enterprises representing the dairy industry are preparing a statement for consideration by the Interdepartmental Commission on International Trade to ban the import of dairy products from Belarus to Ukraine, since the embargo it introduced in 2016 on Ukrainian dairy products is a discriminatory and unfriendly action.
This was announced by Head of the Union of Dairy Enterprises of Ukraine Vadym Chaharovsky to Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.
“We believe that in this case it is necessary to apply Article 29 of the law on foreign economic activity on protection from unfriendly actions of states or economic groups. We believe that the Republic of Belarus took such discriminatory unfriendly actions against Ukraine,” he said.
Chaharovsky said that in 2015, Belarus supported the Russian embargo on the import of Ukrainian dairy products, which came into effect on January 1, 2016. At the same time, the Ukrainian market is currently open for the products of 14 milk processing enterprises from Belarus.
According to Article 29 of the law on foreign economic activity, in response to discriminatory and/or unfriendly actions of other states, customs unions or economic groups, Ukraine may apply a full or partial ban on trade; deprivation of most favored nation or preferential special treatment; introduction of special duties; introduction of a licensing regime for foreign economic operations; establishment of quotas.
The head of the union said that the Ministry of Economy refused to conduct a special investigation of the growing imports of dairy products to Ukraine, an application for which was submitted in February 2021 by a group of 14 enterprises representing the dairy industry. He said that the enterprises are going to submit a repeated application within the next 10 days.
To prevent crisis processes in the dairy industry of Ukraine, it is necessary to adopt a national program for the development of dairy farming and milk processing industry, the implementation of which will allow increasing the number of cows, production and processing of milk by 2030, Head of the Union of Dairy Enterprises of Ukraine Vadym Chaharovsky said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.
“It is necessary to adopt a national program for the development of dairy farming and milk processing industry. We have already developed a concept for this program, and its main indicators are as follows: an increase in the number of cows to 2.3 million heads, an increase in milk output to 10 million tonnes, it is real, not the figure that our statistics gives, the growth of milk processing up to 8 million tonnes, while last year we processed 3.5 million tonnes,” the head of the union said.
According to him, the industry can achieve such indicators if it receives UAH 45 billion of government support for the period 2021-2030, similar to the practice existing in other countries.
At a press conference, Head of the Supervisory Board of CJSC Kulykivske Moloko (Kulykivka, Chernihiv region) Anatoliy Didur said that Ukrainian dairy products are uncompetitive and are being squeezed out of the Ukrainian market by imported ones, mainly produced by the EU. According to him, EUR 69 billion will be provided by the EU to the dairy industry support program for 2021-2027, and an increase in government support for Ukrainian milk producers and processors could increase the competitiveness of Ukrainian products.
In addition, the head of the union said that to overcome the crisis in the industry, it is necessary to conduct a special investigation into the growth of imports of dairy products to Ukraine, as well as introduce retaliatory safeguard measures against its exports from Belarus, which in 2016 joined the embargo imposed by the Russian Federation on the Ukrainian dairy products.
Chaharovsky said that milk producers and processors need a number of laws to be passed by parliament to stimulate the development of the dairy industry.
“It is necessary to amend the laws on quality and safety, where to define milk falsification as food fraud, and amend the Criminal Code, which criminalizes the falsification of dairy products,” Chaharovsky said.
He also noted the need to adopt a law on the main provisions of food trade, which provides for a fair distribution of the added value created by milk processing enterprises by the state, as well as the abolition of the current law on milk and dairy products.
“We need to help MPs in the near future to adopt bill No. 5425-d, which will return 20% VAT on dairy raw materials. It is also necessary to amend bill No. 5600 regarding household land plots, because in our opinion, its adoption will force the villagers keeping cattle to cut this livestock, because they will not be able to procure feed for themselves,” the head of the union said.
In addition, Chaharovsky announced the need to unite all public industry associations into one powerful lobbying organization.
“The practice, when multidisciplinary organizations lobbied and pushed some bills, ended. It showed that some laws were adopted against the wishes of the dairy industry. Therefore, we declare today that we will create a powerful organization that will lobby for the interests of our industry,” Chaharovsky said.
