KYIV. Aug 26 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) in July first this year bought around 70,000 troy ounces of gold or around 2.2 tonnes, the regulator has said on its website.
The central bank said that its official gold reserve has been returned to the level of October 2014 – 0.84 million troy ounces or around 26.1 tonnes.
Due to the decline in the cost of gold the value of gold reserve as of late July 2015 was $912.54 million, which is 7.7% less than in October 2014.
As reported, since August 2004 the official gold reserve of the NBU was permanently expanded.
The largest gold reserve of 1.38 million troy ounces was reached in April 2014, and after the audit of reserves the gold reserve narrowed by 90,000 troy ounces in May. In October 2014, the NBU sold around 0.46 million troy ounces of gold or 14.3 tonnes.
As for the unofficial gold reserve, in December 2014 it fell by 2.8 times in money terms, to $43.3 million and it has been estimated at $54-58 million in the past three months.
The share of gold reserve of total forex reserve of the country was the largest in February 2015 – 16.4%. By late July the share of gold reserve was 8.8%, while in October 2014 it was 7.9%.
KYIV. Aug 26 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors on August 25 approved a $500 million IBRD loan to finance the Second Multi-Sector Development Policy Operation in Ukraine, the World Bank has said on its website.
“The package of reforms supported by this operation will help address the deep-rooted structural problems that have contributed to Ukraine’s current economic crisis,” Qimiao Fan, World Bank Country Director for Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine, said.
World Bank said that this new financing (Development Policy Loan, DPL) supports a number of high-priority structural and macroeconomic reforms to improve the country’s public sector governance, business environment, energy and social assistance.
In particular, reform measures supported by this loan – the second in a series of two – will promote good governance, transparency, and accountability in the public sector. The loan ensures that scarce public resources will be used effectively to provide quality public services at a crucial time.
At the same time, the operation will support efforts to strengthen the regulatory framework and reduce the cost of doing business. This should help unleash the private enterprise and help create sustainable and good quality jobs for Ukrainians.
Finally, this operation will assist the authorities to continue reforming inefficient and inequitable utility subsidies while protecting the poor from tariff increases by strengthening social assistance, World Bank said.
This operation is part of the World Bank Group’s broader financial support package announced in February this year, which aims to provide Ukraine with up to $2 billion in 2015. The $750 million First Multi-Sector Development Policy Loan was disbursed in May 2014.
Earlier, deputy head of the presidential administration of Ukraine Dmitry Shymkiv and government officials clarified that the World Bank’s issue of a $500 million DPL-2 will enable Ukraine to receive $300 million from the government of Japan under a bilateral intergovernmental agreement on the promotion and protection of investment (an investment agreement between Japan and Ukraine).
The Verkhovna Rada adopted the necessary laws for this new funding in the spring and summer of this year along with other laws that have allowed Kyiv to get a $1.7 billion second tranche from the International Monetary Fund within the EFF program in early August.
The World Bank is a major development partner of Ukraine. With this new investment, the Bank’s active lending portfolio will amount to over $5 billion. The bank’s current investments go into improving basic public services that directly benefit people of the country, such as water, sanitation, heating, power, roads, social safety net programs and health services.
Since Ukraine joined the World Bank in 1992, the Bank’s commitments to the country have totaled over $9 billion for 45 projects and programs.
KYIV. Aug 26 (Interfax-Ukraine) – A total of 5,000 standards are to be drawn up and approved by 2020 to harmonize the Ukrainian standard system with the European one.
This is stipulated in the technical regulation system development strategy for the period until 2020 approved by cabinet resolution No. 844 of August 19.
According to the strategy, its goal is to modernize the Ukrainian economy and provide for competitiveness of Ukrainian products via gradual integration of Ukraine into the EU market, overcome technical barriers in trade between Ukraine and the EU and strengthen its positions on the global market thanks to the recognition of the technical regulation system of Ukraine on the European and international levels.
According to the document, small volumes of Ukrainian products exports to the EU shows that the quality and safety of products and relevant technologies used in Ukraine should be improved.
“The important task is the increase of efficiency and competitiveness of the economy, in particular, industrial production. The proper quality and safety of product is to be retained, as the EU laws pay special attention to this,” reads the strategy.
The key directions of the realization of the strategy is the adaptation of Ukrainian law in the technical regulation area to EU laws; the adoption of the European standards as national with the synchronous revoking of GOST standards; removal of doubling functions in state supervision (control) over the compliance of products to the requirements; and the provision of the full correspondence of the Ukrainian technical regulation system to the EU requirements. The strategy also foresees the improvement of the existing material and technical base to assess the compliance of products to the requirements, securing the reorganization letters of accreditation issued by the National Accreditation Agency of Ukraine at the European and international levels, securing the integration of the information exchange system in the area of state market supervision with the EU systems.
The strategy includes 58 clauses and the Economic Development and Trade, Finance Ministry, Foreign Ministry, Justice Ministry, Infrastructure Ministry, Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities Economy Ministry, National and state scientific metrological centers, etc are responsible for the implementation of the strategy.
KYIV. Aug 25 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Egypt wants to import 12,000 tonnes of Ukrainian poultry, Agricultural Policy and Food Minister of Ukraine Oleksiy Pavlenko has said.
“Today we’ve received an offer to export 12,000 tonnes of poultry to Egypt,” Pavlenko said at a meeting with agricultural traders in Kyiv region on Friday.
He said that agreements were reached during his working visit to Egypt on August 5 through August 7, 2015. During his visit, Pavlenko met Minister of Agriculture and land Reclamation of Egypt Salah El-Din Helal.
As reported, PJSC Berezan poultry farm (Kyiv region) and PJSC Avis agrofirm (Khmelnytsky region), which are under the control of Avangard agroholding, have received a permit to export shell eggs to Israel.
PEREYASLAV-KHMELNYTSKY (Kyiv region). Aug 25 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry of Ukraine has said that Ukrainian grain exports have totaled 4 million tonnes since the early 2015/16 agricultural year (July-June), Minister Oleksiy Pavlenko has said.
“Since July, grain exports totaled around 4 million tonnes,” Pavlenko said at a meeting with grain traders with the participation of Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk in Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky on Friday.
Pavlenko said that Ukraine has finished harvesting early grain crops.
The minister said that despite the decline in grain prices, Ukraine could export 36 million tonnes of grain this season.
“At present, exports of agricultural products to the Customs Union countries is less than to African countries. We export products worth $2.6 billion to Africa and $2 billion to the Customs Union countries. Now $5 billion is total earnings from exports [of agricultural products] to the EU,” Pavlenko said.
As reported, in the 2014/15 agri-year Ukraine exported 34.8 million tonnes of grain crops.
KYIV. Aug 25 (Ukraine-Ukraine) – Ukraine and Egypt have agreed to deepen cooperation between the customs agencies, which will simplify export and import operations and customs clearance, as well as liberalize the customs procedures in Ukraine for Egypt-made farm produce, the Ukrainian Economic Development and Trade Ministry said.
The agreement was made at a meeting of Ukraine’s Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister, who is also Ukraine’s Trade Representative, Natalia Mykolska and Egypt’s Minister of Industry and Trade Mounir Fakhry Abdel-Nour during Mykolska’s visit to Egypt on August 18-19.
Mykolska drew attention to the fact that Egypt had used safeguards against Ukrainian steel bars and might also increase import duties on this type of products, which may become a considerable obstacle to sales of the Ukrainian produce on the Egyptian market.
The sides also discussed the possibility of arrange joint economic business forums for both countries entrepreneurs and the establishment of a dialogue between the Federation of Industrialists of Egypt, the Egyptian Chamber of Commerce and their Ukrainian peers. In particular, the sides decided to exchange information before September 15 about ways to implement potential projects to facilitate further cooperation.
Mykolska also met with the head of the Association of the Egyptian Chambers of Commerce to consider the possibility of the creation of joint projects in shipbuilding (modernization and retrofitting of the industrial fishing fleet), cosmetic medicine, production of pharmaceuticals, machine-building, cooperation in research and engineering. What is more, the sides touched upon the introduction of innovation technologies in medicine, the sector of IT services and tourism.
