Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada on Tuesday passed at first reading bill No. 3871 amending some Ukrainian laws regarding the ban on the use of palm oil in food. A total of 233 lawmakers backed the document.
The bill proposes amending the Code of Administrative Offenses of Ukraine, the laws on milk and dairy products, on the key principles and requirements to safety and quality of food. The amendments introduce administrative punishment for production and sale of food with palm oil content. It is banned to use palm oil in production of dairy products and food made in Ukraine.
The violation of the law implies a fine from 20 to 100 non-taxable minimum incomes of citizens (UAH 17) imposed on officials. The repeated violation committed during one year after imposing the first fine entails a fine from 100 to 200 non-taxable minimum incomes of citizens.
The State Export Control Service of Ukraine has designed a draft anti-corruption program for 2018-2019. According to the document posted on the website of the authority, the program is intended to create the effective corruption prevention and reveal system in the authority based on new principles of making and implementing the anti-corruption policy.
Among measures to be taken is the analysis of data in relation to corruption risks in the authority, as well as factor that give rise to it; regular monitoring of the implementation of tasks and functions by the authority with the purpose of revealing and removing conditions giving rise to corruption risks and corruption crimes.
The measures also include the provision of financial supervision through declaration of property, income, expenses of officials and employees of the authority, creation of proper conditions for receiving information from whistleblowers who exposes corruption and crimes linked to corruption and the creation of the system of their protection and keeping information in secret.
According to the analysis of corruption risks posted on the website of the authority, corruption risks with medium and high priority are the following: providing advice on processing and submission of necessary documents in the field of export control to the authority; acceleration or delay in the processing of applications of subjects of international transfers of goods to obtain permits for the right to export and import military goods; a lack of a clear procedure for investigating offenses in the sphere of state export control and a lack of authority of the relevant department to identify these offenses independently; leakage of information from electronic databases operating by the authority and other risks.
Cattle numbers in Ukraine as of May 1, 2018 amounted to almost 3.94 million animals, which is 4.4% less compared to early May 2017, the State Statistics Service has reported. According to the report, the number of cows shrank by 3.8% over the period, to 2.03 million.
The number of pigs decreased by 6.3% in April 2018, to 6.18 million, sheep and goats – by 3.9%, to 1.62 million animals.
The number of poultry grew by 1.2% compared with early May 2017, to 201.08 million birds.
As reported, with reference to statistical data, cattle numbers in Ukraine (excluding the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea and Sevastopol and the ATO zone) in 2017 amounted to 3.682 million animals, which is 1.5% less compared to 2016. Pig numbers fell by 8.2%, to 6.12 million, sheep and goats grew by 0.1%, to 1.316 million and poultry – by 1.7%, to 205.103 million.
The number of pigs fell by 5.8%, to 6.669 million, poultry by 1.1%, to 201.7 million birds, and sheep and goats by 0.8%, to 1.315 million.
The deficit of Ukraine’s foreign trade with goods in January-March 2018 grew 1.5-fold year-over-year, reaching $1.201 billion ($794.1 million in Q1 2017), the State Statistics Service reported on Tuesday. In March, the deficit was $460 million, while in February – $457 million and in January – $284.1 million.
In January-March 2018, exports of goods grew by 10.3% year-over-year, to $11.435 billion, and imports – by 13.2%, to $12.636 billion.
In March 2018 compared with the previous month seasonally adjusted volumes of exports grew by 2.5% and imports – by 2%. The seasonally adjusted deficit of foreign trade in March 2018 was $338.7 million, in February 2018 – the deficit was $352.9 million and in January – $519.9 million.
As a result, the coefficient of coverage of imports by exports was 0.90 (in January-March 2017 some 0.93).
The service said foreign trade operations were conducted with partners from 209 countries.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman predicts that the new Beskydsky tunnel will be launched by the end of May.
“The new two-track railway Beskydsky tunnel, which is the largest infrastructure facility of the Ukrainian railways built in the years of independence, will be finally launched by late May, as the government resolution requires,” the press service of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine reported on Tuesday, citing Groysman.
The prime minister paid attention to the fact that the tunnel is an important logistic component of routes for exports of Ukrainian products to the European Union (EU).
“We need to ensure support of exports, so we do not have problems with supplies of products,” he said.
In addition, the prime minister said that issues of providing wagons and increasing the quality of servicing, first of all, in the passenger segment, should be solved quickly.
As reported, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine in March 2018 increased the estimated cost of construction of the Beskydsky railroad tunnel by UAH 737 million, to UAH 2.292 million.
The Beskydsky tunnel was built in 1886 and has already exhausted its operational resource. Trains pass the tunnel with the minimum speed. In addition, the single-track tunnel limited the capacity of the entire international transport corridor.
The new tunnel is to start operating at full on May 25, 2018.
Ukrnafta intends to drill two wells in Sumy and Lviv regions, the company’s press service has reported.
“The investment committee has approved the drilling of two new wells,” the report said.
According to the press service, in January-March 2018 the company carried out a number of steps to increase the productivity of existing wells.
“Eight wells were transferred to electric centrifugal pumps, as a result the average daily production of oil and condensate on these deposits increased by 70.4%, to 42.6 tonnes. In general, as of late March electric centrifugal pumps operated on more than 300 wells of the company,” the press service noted.
Since the beginning of the year, Ukrnafta has completed overhauls on 28 wells and has carried out 14 production intensifications.
“Among the main works carried out at the facilities is the transition to other productive horizons, the elimination of accidents with oil well tubing and downhole equipment, the elimination of leaks in the production column, the addition of productive horizons and the additional perforation of the operating ones. Thanks to the overhauls, as of March 31 the company had additionally extracted 1,082 tonnes of oil and condensate and 1.935 million cubic meters of gas. Intensification operations gave an additional 1,920 tonnes of oil with condensate and 181,000 cubic meters of gas,” the press service said.
