The Ukrainian government is taking steps to remove Ukrainian products from under the U.S. sanctions for steel and aluminum products, Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade – Ukraine’s Trade Representative Natalia Mykolska has said. “We believe that Ukrainian products, which have been represented on the American market for a long time, do not pose any threat to U.S. national security. We are in constant dialogue with the U.S. government and keep in contact with Ukrainian producers about this matter,” she wrote on her Facebook page on Friday.
U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier that the United States would impose a 25% duties on steel imports and 10% duties on aluminum. The U.S. Department of Commerce concluded after an audit that imports of these metals threaten to impair U.S. national security. Trump has until April 11 to make a decision on steel and April 19 for aluminum.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) continues to insist on the adoption by the Ukrainian authorities of legislation on the Anti-Corruption Court in accordance with the country’s obligations under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) cooperation program.
“Our discussions are ongoing with the Ukrainian authorities. In fact, at the request of the authorities a small staff team from the IMF visited Kyiv to discuss technical aspects of reforms which are supported by the program, including broad discussion on various issues, including draft of the legislation on the anticorruption court. At the conclusion of the visit we issued a statement indicating that further progress needs to be made on delayed measures that are necessary to achieve the program objectives, including in energy sector and fiscal policy as well as I just mentioned Anticorruption efforts,” IMF official representative Gerry Rice said during a regular briefing in Washington.
He added, the date of the arrival of the IMF mission to Kyiv as part of the next revision of the EFF program has not yet been determined.
The four-year EFF program launched by the IMF in March 2015, in the total amount of SDR 12.348 billion (around $17.25 billion), initially involved quarterly reviews of the program, with the first tranche of $5 billion, and the next three, SDR 1.18 billion each (around $1.65 billion), to be paid during 2015, and decreasing quarterly tranches to SDR 0.44 billion ($0.61 billion) in 2016-2018. Ukraine was able to receive, with a slight delay, the second tranche, $1.7 billion, under this program, in early August 2015, followed by a lengthy pause because of the country’s failure to meet a number of conditions, political crisis and changes in the government.
The regional office of the European Union Advisory Mission to Ukraine (EUAM) opened in Odesa on March 7.
“The EU Advisory Mission was created in order to help with reform process and the fact that we are now opening a third regional presence and in doing so extending our support to Odesa shows that we are increasing our commitment in this regard,” said Kenneth Deane, the Civilian Operations Commander for the European Union’s civilian Common Security and Defence Policy Missions.
He also added that the mission would focus its efforts on justice and law enforcement with the aim of strengthening Ukrainian society’s confidence in the relevant agencies.
Deane stressed the importance of further reforms and the fight against corruption, without which the development of the law enforcement system is impossible.
For his part, head of Odesa State Regional Administration Maksym Stepanov promised full support for EUAM in the region. “After all, we need it,” he said, adding that he was confident in the high efficiency of the work of the mission.
In the short term, approximately 20 EUAM staff members – a combination of local and international experts – will start working in Odesa.
Growth of audience of Viber application in Ukraine in 2017 was over 11% compared with 2016, and the number of registrations in January 2018 grew by 50% year-over-year, the company’s press service has reported.
The company did not disclose the concrete figure for the number of subscribers and financial information, referring to corporate information policy of Japan’s Rakuten Group, the parent company.
“The number of messages that Ukrainian Viber users sent to other users from January 2017 to January 2018 increased to 55 billion, which is 80% more than in the previous year. Every second citizen of Ukraine now has the messenger,” the press service said.
According to the company, in 2017, Viber users in Ukraine were more likely to communicate with each other via free calls within the application. Thus, the users of the messenger took advantage of the possibility of audio and video calls 1 billion times, which is twice as many as in 2016. At the same time, the average talk time exceeded 6 minutes.
Trends in the use of Viber in Ukraine coincide with international ones. In 70% of cases during 2017, Ukrainians entered the messenger from a mobile phone (Android), 19% from the iPhone (iOS), 4% used Viber from the tablet, and another 7% – the version for desktop computers.
Viber is part of Japan’s Rakuten Inc., operating in the field of e-commerce and financial services. In 2018, Viber is available in 193 countries and localized in 28 languages.
Private joint-stock company Mondelez Ukraine (earlier Kraft Foods Ukraine) saw a 5.5-fold rise in net profit in 2017, to UAH 310.2 million.
According to a company report on holding the annual meeting of shareholders scheduled for April 5, 2018, its assets last year slightly fell to UAH 3.305 billion. Fixed assets rose by 8.6%, to UAH 1.345 billion.
Total bills receivable narrowed by 12%, to UAH 843.8 million, and undistributed profit – by 2.3%, to UAH 1.677 billion.
Current liabilities grew by 3.6%, to UAH 1.521 billion.
Mondelez Ukraine is part of Mondelez International group of companies, one of the world’s largest producers of chocolate goods, cookies, sweets, and chewing gum.
The company in Ukraine includes Trostianets confectionery factory (Sumy region) and Chips Lux LLC subsidiary company (Kyiv region).
People’s deputies have proposed to reduce the basic rate of value added tax (VAT) from 20% to 16% with the aim of optimizing payment of this tax, as well as abolish the third group of single tax payers.
Corresponding bill No. 8089 has been registered in the Verkhovna Rada, according to the parliamentary website. Its initiators were people’s deputies Andriy Shynkovych and Hennadiy Chekita (the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko faction).
“The current basic VAT rate of 20%, even if the system of electronic VAT administration is gradually implemented, makes it possible to apply a variety of schemes for VAT evasion in the form of the so called “twists” and fictitious business entities, since their services cost 10-12% and the VAT rate of 20% forces them to use their services to optimize tax burden and legalize the shadow turnover of goods and services,” the authors of the bill explained in an explanatory note to the document.
According to the explanatory note, the draft law proposes to abolish the third group of single tax payers.
