Fields with spring crops of Mriya agroholding this year would expand by almost 21% compared with 2017, to 103,250 ha, the company said on Tuesday. The company said in a press release that this year the sowing campaign was started later than it was planned due to late spring.
“Due to weather, we will have to carry out the spring sowing campaign on a tight schedule. We have adjusted our plans and intentionally increased the share of early grain crops, spring barley and rapeseeds, to 14,200 hectares and 7,500 ha in the structure of the areas planted by Mriya. We also succeeded in promptly contracting additional tillage equipment and seeders, so we hope to complete the sowing of spring crops without falling behind the plan,” Mriya Chief Operation Officer Andriy Hryhorov said.
This spring, the strategic agricultural crops for the holding are sunflower, with 33,500 hectares, corn (14,800 hectares), soybean (24,700 hectares) and sugar beet, the areas under which are doubled compared with last year, to 7,200 ha. Traditionally, peas (356 hectares) and potatoes (660 ha) are also present in the structure of the areas planted by Mriya.
During the sowing campaign 2018 some of the areas the agroholding will be sowed with seeds of its own production, in particular, soybeans.
Ukraine will receive about $3 billion each in 2018 and 2019 as revenues from natural gas transit, Naftogaz Chief Commercial Officer Yuriy Vitrenko has said.
“The revenues from transit should be at the level of $3 billion each in 2018 and 2019,” he wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday.
According to the ruling of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Naftogaz should receive money from the transit through Ukraine’s gas transport system of 110 billion cubic meters of Russian gas regardless of actual volumes of transportation. The contracts between Gazprom and Naftogaz for gas supply and transit are valid until the end of 2019.
According to Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolev, this is not a classic “take or pay” case, but if Gazprom does not fulfill the contractual volume of transit of 110 billion cubic meters per year, Naftogaz will again file a claim with the arbitration court and will sue the Russian company for non-fulfillment of the terms of the contract.
The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine has permitted BAU-Capital LLC belonged to the owners of the Kovalska industrial and construction group to gain control over public joint-stock company Darnytsia Reinforced Concrete Constructions Plant and Beton Service LLC (all based in Kyiv).
The committee said that the regulator permitted the company to buy shares in PJSC Darnytsia Reinforced Concrete Constructions Plant and a stake in the charter capital of Beton Service LLC, granting over 50% of the votes in the management bodies of the two companies.
In January 2018, the committee started hearing a case regarding gaining control by BAU-Capital over the two above-mentioned companies. The case concerns the concentration of the Kovalska industrial and construction group on the concrete mixture market in Ukraine.
BAU-Capital currently has control over PJSC Svitlana Kovalska Reinforced-Concrete Constructions Plant (RCCP), Beton Complex and Avtobudcomplex-K LLC selling readymix concrete under the Concrete from Kovalska trademark.
The Kovalska industrial and construction group was founded in 2006.
The Ukrainian Sea Port Authority and China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd. (CHEC) on April 6, 2018 signed two contracts for carrying out dredging works at the Chornomorsk seaport (Odesa region): one document envisages dredging works in the approach canal and the second one – in the water area of the first boot basin of Sukhy estuary.
An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent has reported that the signing ceremony was held with participation of Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan, Ukrainian Sea Port Authority Head Raivis Veckagans, Head of the administration of the Chornomorsk branch of the Ukrainian Sea Port Authority Viacheslav Voloshyn, Head of the administration of the Yuzhny branch of the Ukrainian Sea Port Authority Maksym Shyrokov, Head of the representative office of CHEC in Ukraine Lin Tao, representatives of the Chinese Embassy in Ukraine and journalists.
“The project of dredging the water area of the Chornomorsk seaport provides for an increase in the depths of water approaches and the operational water area of the port to 16 meters and will allow more efficient functioning of one of the largest seaports in Ukraine,” Omelyan said.
He thanked Veckagans who, in his words, together with the team, created all the necessary conditions for attracting both national and foreign companies with a world-wide reputation to participate in tenders.
“Traditionally, the contract organization was chosen based on the results of the tender in the ProZorro e-procurement system, which ensures absolute transparency and openness of the process and excludes the possibility of any corruption. Thus, according to the results of the tender, we have saved more than UAH 40 million, and the winner is China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd.,” Omelyan said.
As a result of the tender, which took place on March 13, the savings amounted to 10% of the expected value.
The cost of the project is UAH 404 million.
“The project should be implemented before the end of 2018. Reconstruction of the maritime approach canal and the water area of the first boot basin will further allow for the reconstruction of the berths of the Chornomorsk port and the dredging works in the operating area of the berths,” Veckagans said.
The World Bank has kept the forecast for Ukraine’s GDP growth in 2018 at 3.5%, Lead Economist and Program Leader covering Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine Faruk Khan said in Kyiv on Tuesday.
“Economic growth is projected at 3.5% in 2018 if pending reforms in anticorruption, land markets, state-owned banks, and privatization can be advanced in the next few months. This would provide an important signal to investors. If reforms are delayed, growth could drop below current levels in an uncertain macroeconomic environment as financing risks rapidly increase,” the World Bank said in a press release.
According to the World Bank’s economic update for Ukraine, the growth outlook has become more uncertain, but safeguarding macroeconomic stability and completing key pending reforms by July 2018 to bolster investor confidence can help boost growth in the next two years.
“The complex political environment ahead of the 2019 elections is affecting reform prospects, but a window of opportunity exists to complete key reforms by July 2018. Reforms in land markets, the financial sector, anticorruption, and privatization would not only address medium-term growth bottlenecks, but also provide an important immediate signal to strengthen investor confidence,” the World Bank said.
The World Bank’s experts said that addressing macroeconomic vulnerabilities and containing inflationary pressures to reduce cost of funds for the private sector is also important to strengthen investor confidence. Under such a scenario with continued improvements in investor confidence, economic growth could improve to 3.5% in 2018 and 4% in 2019, with fixed investment growing by about 15%.
