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.
Nibulon (Mykolaiv), one of the largest grain traders in Ukraine, intends to build a port in the village of Oleksandrivka (Kherson region) in five years, the company said in a statement.
“This port is a great prospect for the development of the entire Kherson region. This is an extremely difficult task and very large investments, but our company can do this only in five years,” CEO of the company Oleksiy Vadatursky said.
According to him, Nibulon continues the implementation of the investment program in Kherson region. There are already two transshipment terminals of the company in the village of Kozatske and Hola Prystan, while next year the company plans to increase the capacity of the Hola Prystan transshipment terminal by 20,000 tonnes, as well as to expand the capacity of this enterprise for accepting rice.
The company plans in the next two years to reorient almost all of its cargoes to the Dnipro River and transport by water up to 4 million tonnes of products per year, which will allow reducing the load on the roads.
Nibulon cultivates 83,000 hectares of land. It exports agricultural products to more than 60 countries. The annual export volume exceeds 4.5 million tonnes.
Passenger traffic at Kharkiv International Airport in November 2018 was 72,700 people, which is 19% more than in the same period of 2017.
According to the press service of the airport, the largest demand last month was for flights to Kyiv, Istanbul, Warsaw, Katowice, Dortmund, Gdansk, Wroclaw, Tel Aviv, and Minsk.
The airport also reported that in 2019 four new directions will be opened from Kharkiv to Odesa, Krakow, Rome, and Milan.
As reported, in October 2018 passenger traffic from Kharkiv airport was 82,900 people, which is 22% more than in the same period of 2017.
In 2017, the airport increased passenger traffic to 806,100 people (in 2016 this figure was 599,700 people). In 2018, it is planned to increase it by another 12% (up to 900,000 people).
Kharkiv Airport has a runway with a length of 2,500 meters and a width of 50 meters. It has two passenger terminals with a capacity of 100 and 650 people per hour.
The VEON international telecom group has appointed Alexander Komarov President of Kyivstar, the leading Ukrainian mobile communications operator.
Komarov in July 2018 was appointed acting President of Kyivstar and replaced Peter Chernyshov. He also runs the post of CEO of Beeline Kazakhstan.
“In Ukraine, Kyivstar is a national success story and I am convinced that with Alexander [Komarov] at the helm the company will continue to be the leading provider of connectivity and internet services in Ukraine,” VEON reported on Thursday, citing VEON’s Executive Chairperson Ursula Burns.
Komarov, born in 1972, graduated from the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, began his career in 1994 at the Kyiv Research Center of the Military Institute of Management and Communications, from 1997 to 2002 worked for Globalstar in marketing and sales. In 2002, he was invited to the post of business development director at Adell Saatchi & Saatchi (Video International Kyiv), in 2004 he became CEO of this advertising agency, and later headed the Video International in Ukraine, a group of companies.
In 2007-2013, Komarov was CEO of a large Ukrainian marketing company GroupM. In July 2013, he received an invitation from Kazakhstan from Beeline and was appointed Chief Commercial Officer, and in January 2016 he headed the company.
Kyivstar is the largest Ukrainian mobile communications operator. According to latest data, its subscribers’ base is around 26.6 million.
VEON international group (earlier VimpelCom) is the shareholder in Kyivstar. The group’s shares are listed on NASDAQ (New York).