Ukraine will open the Consulate General in Canada’s Edmonton on September 7, Ukrainian Ambassador to Canada Andriy Shevchenko has said. “On September 7 this year, we plan to accept the first citizen of Ukraine in Edmonton and thereby start the work of the Ukrainian Consulate General in Alberta province,” he told Interfax-Ukraine. Shevchenko noted that Ukraine’s presence in the western part of Canada will be ensured in this way.
The ambassador expressed hope that the opening of the consulate will be important for establishing contacts with business.
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Xoom, a subsidiary structure of the PayPal payment service, has launched a service of money transfer from the United States to Ukraine, the initiator of the group on the introduction of PayPal in Ukraine, Ilia Kenigshtein, has said.
“Xoom is a money transfer system that PayPal bought in November 2015. Earlier Xoom was able to send money to 44 countries, Ukraine was not on this list. Starting from today, Xoom allows sending money from the U.S. to 130 countries, which include Ukraine,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
According to Kenigshtein, currently only one of the system services, Cash Pickup, which allows recipients in Ukraine to take remittance in one of the banks listed on the Xoom website.
Among the partner banks are Oschadbank, PrivatBank, Pravex-Bank, Ukrgasbank, Universal Bank, VS Bank, Accordbank, Industrialbank, Kredobank, Pivdenny Bank, Credit Dnipro, Vostok, Globus, IBOX Bank, as well as Ukrainian Financial Group.
“As for the limits: you can send up to $2,999 per day, but not more than $6,000 during 30 days, or expand the limits through the form on the website, providing additional documents,” the expert said.
The group’s initiator expects that in time PayPal, the parent company, will also provide services in Ukraine.
“In fact, this is a historical moment, confirming that sooner or later PayPal will come to Ukraine,” he noted.
As reported, the volume of private money transfers to Ukraine in January-May 2018 increased by 30% compared to the same period in 2017, to $4.5 billion.
UBC Group, a trade and industrial holding in Kharkiv, working in the field of refrigeration and promotional products, intends in the beginning of September to launch the first stage of a Green Cool plant with an area of about 20,000 square meters to produce refrigerator equipment in the industrial park Vinnytsia Cluster of Refrigeration Engineering.
Vitaliy Pohosian, the director of the Vinnytsia City Council economy and investment department, told Interfax-Ukraine that on August 27 an agreement was signed on the creation and functioning of an industrial park between Vinnytsia Mayor Serhiy Morhunov, Ukrainian Brewery Company (UBC Group) and Industrial-Investment Company LLC, which became the managing company of the industrial park based on the results of an open tender.
As reported, Vinnytsia Cluster of Refrigeration Engineering was introduced by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine in the register of industrial parks in May 2017.
The expert said the necessary procedures for attracting the managing company were made, competitive conditions were developed, the business plan of the park development was considered.
“This work, which takes a lot of time, was actually completed by signing an agreement with the managing company,” he said.
Pohosian said today it is the only industrial park of a cluster type in Ukraine, initiated by Vinnytsia City Council and Ukrainian Brewery Company.
Gross office space take-up in Ukraine in H1 2018 grew by 36% year-over-year, reaching some 80,000 square meters, according to a study of CBRE Ukraine consulting company (Kyiv).
“Taking into account the growing pace of economic recovery, we can expect a corresponding increase in demand from tenants. The office segment remains the most attractive in the commercial real estate market, so new requests for large-scale office space and a shortage of high-quality office buildings should accelerate the growth of the new speculative offer in the near future. Large office projects that are in the early stages of construction, an increase in speculative supply can be expected already in the next two or three years, and the quality and rental rates differentiation will continue,” Managing Partner of CBRE Ukraine Serhiy Serhiyenko said.
According to the study, the upward dynamics of business activity in the first six months of 2018 contributed to the growth of tenants’ demand for transactions to expand the already leased and new office space.
According to the company, the total rental activity in the first half of 2018 was approximately 101,000 square meters. In the structure of new transactions for the rental of office premises, 61% of the total volume of demand was for relocation deals, 29% for expansion deals, mostly represented by IT and telecommunications tenants, 9% by “moving with extension” type transactions, and 3% – rent by companies that first entered the market.
As the company reported, in the first half of the year the offer on the office market in Kyiv increased by 2,200 square meters, so the total supply remained virtually unchanged at 1.72 million square meters, and the new offer was presented by the office building as part of Unit City’s first stage.
According to CBRE Ukraine, the total area of quality premises in Kyiv at the stage of development at the end of the first half of the year was about 120,000 square meters, of which about 65,000 square meters is planned to be put into operation before the end of 2018.
As a result of a limited new offer and suspended rental activity, the average vacancy decreased by 5 p.p. from the beginning of the year, to 12% from 17%. Declared rental rates increased by 10-20%, while the highest effective rental rate remained stable at $23 per square meter a month.
