Foreign direct investment (FDI) made from domestic assets was estimated at $485 million in 2018 against $270 million in 2017, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has said in its statement on the so-called “round-trip investment” (when a resident withdraws funds that are then returned to the country in the form of foreign direct investment).
The regulator noted that this amount was 20.6% of the total FDI in Ukraine in 2018, while in 2017 the share of round-trip investment was 10.4%, and 4.1% in 2016.
The central bank added that $106 million of the amount of $485 million mentioned above will be invested in banks (compared to $54 million last year). Round-trip investment in other sectors last year was estimated at $379 million ($216 million in 2017).
In 2010-2018 the volume of residents’ assets that were withdrawn abroad and then returned to Ukraine in the form of foreign investment was estimated at $8.4 billion, or 22% of the total FDI over this period.
According to the NBU, Ukrainian businesses conducted such transactions mostly via Cyprus ($4.1 billion), the Netherlands ($1.54 billion), Switzerland ($530 million), and Austria ($480 million).
The NBU plans to publish such data on an annual basis.
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The Kyivstar mobile communications operator in January-March 2019 connected 968 localities in 24 regions of Ukraine to the 4G communications (LTE) network, the press service of the company has told Interfax-Ukraine.
“In the first quarter of 2019, Kyivstar connected 968 localities to the 4G communications network, connecting 10 new localities per day. This happened in all regions,” the company said.
According to Kyivstar’s press service, today the operator’s 4G communications network is available in 4,587 localities in the territory where 24.1 million people live (58% of the population of Ukraine).
At the same time, 43% of all mobile data traffic of Kyivstar is generated in the 4G network.
In March 2019, Kyivstar subscribers used the volume of mobile Internet equal to the consumption for the entire 2016 (40 petabytes).
In the first quarter, most of all localities in Ivano-Frankivsk (120), Lviv (108) and Rivne (103) regions were connected. Also among the leading regions in the number of localities connected to the 4G network are Kyiv and Vinnytsia regions: 73 and 69 respectively.
Kyivstar is a Ukrainian mobile communications operator. VEON international group (earlier VimpelCom) is the shareholder in Kyivstar. The group’s shares are listed on NASDAQ (New York).
