Poland plans to spend 5% of the country’s GDP on defense next year, and possibly this year, Radio Liberty reported on Friday, citing Poland’s Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk.
“This is a huge amount of money that is spent not by the government, but by Polish citizens,” he said.
The deputy minister added that the government wants to create conditions “for every Pole and every Polish woman to be able to undergo military training.”
“It is in the country’s interest that everyone can undergo such training, and it doesn’t matter if it lasts one day, two days or a week, or if it is basic voluntary military service, but the country must create such conditions,” Tomczyk added.
On Sunday, March 9, there will be no precipitation in Ukraine, with fog in the eastern regions at night and in the morning, the Ukrainian Weather Center reports.
Southeast wind, 5-10 m/s. Temperature at night from 3° C to 2° C, during the day 13-18° C, on the coast 7-12°.
In Kyiv, the temperature will be 1-3° Celsius at night and 16-18° Celsius during the day.
According to the Borys Sreznevsky Central Geophysical Observatory. Over the entire period of meteorological observations in Kyiv, the highest temperature on March 9 was +17.3° in 1920, and the lowest was -20.0° in 1915.
On Monday, March 10, there was no precipitation in Ukraine. In the southern part of the country there will be fog at night and in the morning. Southeast wind, 5-10 m / s, in the Carpathians during the day gusts of 15-20 m / s in some places. The temperature will be 0-5° C at night, 13-18° C during the day, 7-12° C on the coast.
In Kyiv, the temperature will be 3-5°C at night and 16-18°C during the day.
Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan have completed their first cross-border freight transportation using the new e-Permit system.
The system allows for the issuance and exchange of permits in a fully digital format, aiming to increase efficiency and reduce processing times for international road freight transport.
The first batch, including a truck from an Uzbek transportation company, arrived in Azerbaijan under the e-Permit system. This marks a step forward in the digitalization of cross-border transportation procedures between the two countries.
AZERBAIJAN, cross-border transportation, digital system, electronic permits, UZBEKISTAN
Since the beginning of the full-scale war, Vitagro Group has invested more than $50 million in the construction of an oil extraction plant, bioethanol and feed production, and the Fyuche Industrial Hub meat processing industrial park, and expanded its land bank from 60 thousand hectares to more than 90 thousand hectares, according to Roman Kantarovsky, head of external financing projects.
“I would like to emphasize that we are building our agro-processing enterprises at our own expense. We are trying to show that this is real and strive to be an example for others. Vitagro’s strategy is agro-processing, which we are actively and deeply involved in,” he said at the Ukrainian Investment Congress in Kyiv on Thursday.
Among the advantages of this type of business development, Kantarovsky mentioned the prospects of transition from a raw material economy to an industrial one, creation of new enterprises and new jobs, and a more stable economy of the warring state. In addition, the development of the agricultural holding during the war, according to the Vitagro representative, is a clear proof for domestic and foreign investors of the feasibility of investing in Ukraine despite the military risks.
Mr. Kantarovskyi recalled that Vitagro started developing the oilseed business in 2016 with the construction of a small oil pressing plant with a processing capacity of 27 thousand tons of sunflower and 7 thousand tons of rapeseed. In 2021, it was decided to expand it and build an oil extraction plant with a capacity of 100 thousand tons of sunflower and 35 thousand tons of rapeseed. The plant is currently being modernized, and in some time it will be able to process an additional 15 thousand tons of soybeans per season.
The agroholding has set bioethanol production as its second priority area of development, and has launched a plant in Ternopil region with a processing capacity of 75,000 tons of corn per year, which is used to produce 27,000 tons of bioethanol. In accordance with European standards, the plant is being modernized and will process waste from bioethanol production, including bard, into high-protein feed, which is used in livestock farming and reduces animal feeding costs by 5-7% depending on the recipe.
Kantarovsky noted that Vitagro Group has a powerful livestock cluster and is one of the top 3 pork producers in Ukraine with a herd of more than 100 thousand heads.
“We have registered an industrial park, on the basis of which we are now starting to implement a project to build a meat processing plant called Füche Industry Hub. This is a rather ambitious project with significant investments. At the end of the year, we plan to start building meat processing shops,” he said.
Vitagro Group is engaged in the production and processing of agricultural crops, including fruits and vegetables, dairy farming, and pig farming. It cultivates about 85 thousand hectares of land in Khmelnytsky, Ternopil and Rivne regions. In 2022, the company acquired Marylivsky distillery (Nahirnyanka village, Ternopil region) from Ukrspirt.
According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs, the ultimate beneficiary of the Vitagro investment company is MP Serhiy Labaziuk (For the Future parliamentary faction).
Geographical structure of Ukraine’s foreign trade (imports) in January-October 2024, million USD
Source: Open4Business.com.ua
Elworthy JSC, a major Ukrainian manufacturer of sowing and tillage equipment based in Kropyvnytskyi, plans to increase its sales by 25% in 2025 compared to 2024, to UAH 712 million.
These plans are contained in the company’s interim report for 2024. The company also plans to break even.
The report does not contain the company’s financial indicators for the whole of 2024, but according to the data published in it for January-September 2024, the loss decreased by almost 4.8 times compared to the same period in 2023 – to UAH 12.45 million, with a slight increase in revenue – to UAH 424.2 million.
In addition, the interim report states that in the fourth quarter of 2024, revenue amounted to UAH 146.321 million, with an export share of 25.9%. The main export markets are Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan).
Seeders account for the largest share in sales (153 units for UAH 49.6 million in the fourth quarter), followed by cultivators (72 units for UAH 17.5 million), construction and road machines (4 units for UAH 11.15 million), sprayers (14 units for UAH 8 million), and harrows (36 units for UAH 7.9 million). The company also produced spare parts worth UAH 15.12 million.
Elworthy JSC considers its main competitors in the production of agricultural machinery to be, among others, Ukrainian companies Veles-Agro, Belotserkovmaz, Favorit, Promagroleasing-Ukraine, Remsyntez, Agromash Kalyna, Boguslavska Sihosptekhnika, LKMZ, and Maschio Gaspardo (Italy).
The company has a dealer network of 35 centers located both in Ukraine and abroad. They are authorized as service centers, which allows them to provide maintenance services in addition to selling equipment.
“2024 was an extremely difficult year for Ukraine’s agricultural sector, in particular due to the lack of precipitation in the second half of the year, which led to a decrease in the amount of harvest and an increase in its cost. At the same time, the ability of farmers to make money on this harvest will depend on the world prices at which they will be able to sell their products, which are also subject to uncertainty,” the report says.
In addition, Elworthy pointed to the risk that with a smaller harvest, prices for agricultural products may not rise, agricultural producers will receive less marginal income and will not be able to purchase agricultural machinery.
Elvorti JSC, a part of the Elvorti Group owned by businessman Pavlo Stutman, specializes in the production of sowing and tillage equipment: seeders for sowing grain and row crops, cultivators for continuous and inter-row tillage, and disk harrows for resource-saving tillage.
In recent years, the company has mastered a new type of product – the Elex backhoe loader.
According to the company, in 2023, it suffered an 81.6% year-on-year loss of UAH 85.9 million, with net income falling by 34.3% to UAH 490.7 million.
At the beginning of 2025, the company employed 372 people.
