President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko said that he had signed the law on the state budget of Ukraine for 2019.
“I have signed a budget law,” the president said, speaking at the 2nd Ukrainian Women’s Congress in Kyiv on Friday.
The total supply in the commercial real estate market will reach 633,000 square meters by 2020, which is 1.5 times more than now, expert in the field of commercial real estate Ihor Zabolotsky has said. “At the end of 2018, the vacancy rate dropped to 3.8%. This is an extremely low level not only for Ukraine, but also for the world. In 2017 there were practically no new projects, 8,000 square meters were commissioned. This year the figure is more significant: taking into account those objects that are to open in December 2018, the figure will reach 85,000 square meters. But these are mostly small objects with an area of 10,000-20,000 square meters, and the appearance of each of them could not affect the market as a whole. The total supply over the next two years could exceed 600,000 square meters. The total stock might increase by more than 1.5 times,” Zabolotsky said at a press conference in the Interfax-Ukraine agency.
In particular, he noted that the opening of the River Mall shopping center is scheduled for the second quarter of 2019 and the Retroville trade center for the third quarter of 2019, as well as the opening of the Blockbuster shopping center was postponed to February 2019. According to the expert, the success of the projects will be determined not by the level of rental rates, but by the purchasing capacity of the population in 2019.
Number of official unemployment persons in Ukraine is low.
The reform support team at the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine has reported on the results of a preliminary feasibility study for a project to restore the runway and build a terminal at Bila Tserkva airport with an estimated investment of EUR59 million. “Getting the status of international by Bila Tserkva has already been initiated, which is expected next year. The Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine provides comprehensive support and assistance in realizing the potential of the Bila Tserkva aerodrome, which is provided for by the Aviation Strategy of Ukraine until 2030,” adviser to the relevant minister Oleksandr Klitin said.
The report also states that the reform support team has already held talks on the development of the airport based on the results of the feasibility study with Finpoint, Millennium Capital, Capital Times and the airport management.
The feasibility study for the airport of Bila Tserkva was developed by independent international consultants under the technical assistance program of the European Commission for Ukraine. According to the evaluation of experts from the ASSIST project, the total cost of priority investments to restore the runway and build the terminal will be about EUR59 million. The modernization of Bila Tserkva aviation complex is a pilot project of this program. ASSIST is a research project co-funded by the European Commission DG MOVE under FP7 (the EU’s Seventh Framework Program for Research). The ASSIST project has been lasting for more than 30 months, starting in April 2011. Scientific research is carried out by a consortium of six partners with the participation of NEA (the Netherlands), TRT (Italy), ProgTrans (Switzerland), FOMTERV (Hungary), CNRS-LET (France), and Fraunhofer-ISI (Germany).
Ukraine in January-November 2018 exported electricity worth $297.619 million, including $31.505 million in November alone. Hungary bought electricity worth $170.705 million, Poland $70.792 million, Moldova $48.019 million, other countries $8.103 million, Ukraine’s State Fiscal Service has said. Over the period under review, Ukraine imported electricity worth $1.316 million, in particular, electricity imports from the Russian Federation were estimated at $1.245 million, from Belarus at $0.064 million, from Moldova at $0.008 million.
As reported, Ukraine plans in 2018 to increase exports of electricity to the EU and Moldova by 13.3% from 2017 to 5.855 billion kWh. According to the forecast for 2018, deliveries from the Burshtyn TPP energy island to Hungary, Slovakia, Romania will be 3.6 billion kWh, to Poland 1.2 billion kWh, and to Moldova 1.055 billion kWh.
On Thursday, the Verkhovna Rada passed at second reading bill No. 8044, amending to the Budget Code of Ukraine on the implementation of medium-term budget planning, which introduced three-year budget planning. An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported that 238 deputies backed the document.
“We have been working for three years to consolidate a civilized approach to budget planning in the state. This is the main reform in the field of public finance,” Finance Minister Oksana Markarova said, commenting on this decision on the ministry’s website.
She recalled that in the pilot mode, this approach has worked successfully since 2017.
The Finance Ministry said that the adopted bill establishes the rule that state and publicly guaranteed debt cannot exceed 60% of GDP, and the national budget deficit – 3% of GDP. In addition, state guarantees will not exceed 3% of the planned revenues of the general fund of the national budget, and the maximum amount of the national budget deficit in the law on the national budget cannot be larger than the deficit in the Budget Declaration.
The finance minister said that three-year budget planning is necessary to ensure strategic priorities with a financial resource, as well as to increase the responsibility of spending units.
