STRUCTURE OF EXPORT OF SERVICES in Jan-March 2021 (GRAPHICALLY)
Industrial production in Ukraine in March 2021 increased by 2.1% compared to March 2020, which was the first month of the introduction of quarantine due to COVID-19, and the growth adjusted for the effect of calendar days was 2.4%, the State Statistics Service has said.
The department indicated that the growth of industrial production in March 2021 amounted to 10.9% against the previous month, and on a seasonally adjusted basis – 1.8%.
In the supply of electricity, gas, steam and conditioned air in March 2021 from March 2020, an increase was 7.3%, in processing industry – 2.5%, while the reduction in production in extracting industry was 1.5%.
The State Statistics Service clarified that in the first quarter of 2021 in relation to the same period a year earlier, industrial production in Ukraine decreased by 2%, in particular in mining industry – by 2.8%, processing – by 3.3%, although the supply of electricity, gas and steam gains 4.1% due to substantially colder weather.
As reported, industrial production in Ukraine in 2020 fell by 5.2% after falling by 0.5% a year earlier. At the same time, in December last year, for the first time since May 2019, its growth was recorded compared to the same period last year – by 4.8%.
Decentralization in Ukraine is far from completion, considers the local government expert, director of the Practical Policy Program of the Institute of Political Education, Alexander Solontay.
“Today we are far from having a decentralized country, we have done only the first basic steps, but we are moving towards this”, – Solontay claimed in comments on features and problems of the decentralization process in Ukraine
on the Youtube channel “Club of Experts“.
In the expert’s opinion, now has arisen a situation in which the implemented reforms had led to greater autonomy of urban and rural communities. At the national level, however, politicians are chosen by a paternalistic population. These policies support communities’ autonomy on the one hand and, on the other, want the Centre to continue to provide guidance locally.
“From above, the mechanisms for interaction with autonomous communities have not yet been worked out. The politicians act in the old way – to pass laws, to direct an order, to allocate funds, and so on. It’s vertical management. How to manage in a new system, where the bottom is independent and the top has limited possibilities, authorities have not yet learned», – says the expert.
Solontay noted that in our environment, where the shadow economy and corruption have not been overcome, the law enforcement agencies are under-reformed and the local power is increasingly independent, a systemic crisis has arisen in interaction of Center and regions.
«Whatever situation would appear in the country, we are always condemned to conflict between authorities and local self-government», – the expert summarized.
DECENTRALIZATION, EXPERT, EXPERTSCLUB, POLITICS, SELF-GOVERNMENT, SOLONTAY
The government is exploring the possibility of strengthening control over visitors from the UK, India, Russia and Portugal to prevent the circulation of the “Delta” (Indian) strain of coronavirus (COVID-19), Health Minister Viktor Liashko said.
“At the Cabinet of Ministers we considered the possibility of strengthening control over people who come from four countries, Great Britain, India, Russia and Portugal, where the greatest circulation of the so-called Delta virus,” he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday.
As noted by Liashko, the peculiarity of the Delta strain is that it is transmitted faster and leads to hospitalization faster.
“This leads to the fact that hospitals fill up rather quickly, in particular, we see this in Russia,” he said.
Metinvest, an international vertically integrated mining and metallurgical group of companies, is exploring the possibility, together with Itlay’s Danieli, to build a new rolling mill in Italy.
Metinvest CEO Yuriy Ryzhenkov said at a press conference devoted to the company’s 15th anniversary held in Kyiv on Wednesday that the project involves the construction of a new production facility in Italy, where Ukrainian slabs will be rolled into hot-rolled flat products.
“The Metinvest Group is really exploring the possibility of building a rolling mill in Italy,” Ryzhenkov said.
At the same time, he recalled that the group already has two plants in Italy, where flat-rolled products are produced from Ukrainian slabs. And Metinvest has always noted that this market is interesting and promising for the company.
“But Metinvest has not made a final decision on this project,” the top manager said.
According to him, now the project is at the pre-feasibility stage, negotiations are also underway with the owners of the site, and the construction of a plant is planned.
Metinvest is a vertically integrated group of mining and metallurgical enterprises. Its enterprises are located in Ukraine – in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, in European countries. In particular, in Bulgaria it has Promet Steel plant with a capacity of 500,000 tonnes of rolled metal per year, in Italy – Metinvest Trametal and Ferriera Valsider with a total annual capacity of 1.2 million tonnes. In the U.K., the company owns Spartan UK plant that is capable to produce 200,000 tonnes of rolled steel annually.
The main shareholders of Metinvest are SCM Group (71.24%) and Smart Holding (23.76%), which jointly manage the company.
The leadership of the Ukrainian state should return to the idea of creating a separate capable analytical center to study the problems of the Russian Federation, Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States (2015-2019) Valeriy Chaly said.
“Scientific analytical centers, serious ones, should work with the NSDC apparatus and, in fact, under the patronage of the president. I would definitely return to the idea and quickly create a capable analytical center on Russian problems. It should be separate, – this is obvious. It is clear that the Institute for Strategic Studies exists, but its ability to submit proposals directly to the president is limited,” Chaly said at a press briefing, titled “NSDC is an Effective Tool that Protects the Interests of the State. New Threats and Challenges to Security” on Wednesday.
At the same time, he emphasized the need to strengthen the vector of foreign policy and international security “from the point of view of forecasts and scenarios in a world that is rapidly changing.”
“We have a weak analysis of what is happening in Asia, that is, in this entire region, which will become key in the next ten years and is beyond our attention,” Chaly said.
In general, in his opinion, Ukraine needs to strengthen the efficiency of public administration.
“I would like to see an increase in the efficiency of public administration through the president’s decision. Today this is a challenge that I would like to draw attention to. In context of an external attack, which comes not only from Russia (from Russia it is an obvious military threat, but there is also from other countries even), the effectiveness of the entire apparatus in the field of security and defense is a key issue that needs to be worked on now,” the diplomat said.
