Goods flow between Ukraine and Estonia in 217 grew by 29.97%, reaching $322.3 million.
“According to the results of 2017, Estonia is 25th in terms of bilateral trade in goods between Ukraine and EU countries with a share of 0.5% of total flow. In 2017, the total trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $322.3 million, which is 29.9% higher than the volume of trade in goods for 2016,” the press service of Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze reported after her meeting with Foreign Minister of Estonia Sven Mikser.
According to the report, exports of Ukrainian goods and services to Estonia grew by 34.1%, to $177.8 million, and imports grew by 25.1%, to $144.5 million. The surplus of Ukraine’s trade with goods with Estonia in 2017 was $33.3 million.
In addition, meeting participants discussed the issues of cooperation of the two countries in economic, humanitarian and security spheres.
“The sides also discussed the challenges related to labor migration of the population and ways to prevent negative trends through educational and economic factors,” the press service said.
Poland’s construction firm, which entered the Ukrainian market in January 2018, plans to sign contracts worth about EUR 50 million within the next two years to build roads in Ukraine. “At the initial stage, Mirbud will concentrate on engineering and road construction in Ukraine… In addition, specialized technical staff allows us to consider the possibility of expanding activities in Ukraine to other segments of construction, for example, investment in the construction of municipally owned buildings,” Director of Mirbud S.A. for development in eastern markets Marek Gola told Interfax-Ukraine.
Road builders in Ukraine will have enough work “for at least the next decade,” he said, as about 90% of roads in Ukraine need to be repaired.
Gola also says that the plans of the State Road Agency of Ukraine, or Ukravtodor, to tighten the procedure for selecting general contractors, including the requirement to build under FIDIC conditions, can play into the hands of the Polish company with 30 years’ experience in the construction of highways.
“The selection procedure mentioned by Ukravtodor will become a huge problem for many Ukrainian road building firms. However, Poland’s main customer, the General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways, has already sets such requirements for its contractors for many years,” Gola said. His company will participate in tenders in the coming months, he added. In the near future, Mirbud is interested in implementing projects in western and central Ukraine. Now the company is checking compliance with Ukrainian requirements, reviewing tender procedures and Ukrainian legislation on public procurements.
“The projects we’ll win will be implemented by ourselves with the participation of local subcontractors. Everything will depend on the location of a project,” the Polish company explained. Mirbud LLC was established on January 24, 2018. Its core business is construction of buildings. The company’s head office is located in Kyiv’s IQ Business Center at 13-15 Bolsunovska Street. Its only participant is JSC Mirbud (Skierniewice, Poland). Its head is Marek Gola. Its charter capital is UAH 370,000.
Odesa’s business court of appeals has ruled in favor of BIIR Property LLC (Odesa), a subsidiary of Denmark’s engineering company BIIR, in dispute with Megas-Bud LLC over the ownership right to the building of an office located at 3B, Prymorska Street in Odesa. “The uniqueness of the lawsuit is that we won it in Odessa. In my country this lawsuit would not have existed at all, and here we were fighting not only with the organization that tried to take away the building from us, but also with representatives of the National Police and Prosecutor’s Office who, in our opinion, violated the law. We will continue to insist on the lawsuit until we find an acceptable solution,” the head of the company, Thomas Sillesen, said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Friday.
He said that BIIR Property appealed to the prosecutor’s office about violations by officials of the National Police and the prosecutor’s office. According to the register of court rulings, Megas-Bud LLC lost ownership right to the administrative building located at 3B, Prymorska Street in Odesa as a result of non-payment of a mortgage loan of $950,000. Due to the transfer of the ownership right to the building from one bank to another and signing the sale and purchase contract, Prime Odesa LLC became its owner, from which BIIR Property acquired the facility in March 2017.
However, according to the lawsuit, Megas Bud LLC decided to file a claim to court, referring to the fact that Prime Odesa took possession of the building by fraud.
BIIR lawyer Oleksiy Lebedev said that the business court brought in the company as a co-defendant in the lawsuit, and also decided to arrest the building, which, according to BIIR, was unreasonable and unlawful. In addition, the arrest was also imposed on the building in criminal proceedings. According to the lawyer, the business court decided to invalidate the transaction, according to which Prime Odesa purchased the building, and remove it from BIIR. The court of appeal, when re-hearing the lawsuit, declared the building as the property of BIIR.
“We appealed to the Supreme Council of Justice with complaints about the judges who unlawfully seized the building. The head of the High Council of Justice personally became interested in this lawsuit,” Sillesen said. According to him, the company began operations in Odesa in 2014, after the forced relocation from Luhansk. The staff is about 100 people, but the company plans its expansion up to 500 people in the next three or four years, which was the reason for buying a building in Odesa.
BIIR (Aarhus, Denmark) was founded in 2008. It provides services for the designing and development of projects of “lean” engineering, in particular, wind power plants. OOO BIIR Property (Odesa) is engaged in the rental of real estate. The owner of the LLC is the Danish J.I.T LLC with the charter capital is UAH 13.5 million.
Megas-Bud LLC was registered in 2007. According to the public register, its co-owner (50%) is ex-deputy of the Odesa City Council Valentyn Skoblenko. The core business of the LLC is construction of buildings. The charter capital of the enterprise is UAH 900,000.
The net profit of PJSC Agrarian Fund in 2017 almost doubled compared to 2016, to UAH 94.8 million, according to the company’s website.
According to information, last year the income of the Agrarian Fund doubled, to UAH 4.3 billion. At the same time, the company paid UAH 949 million of taxes, dividends amounted to UAH 24.4 million.
Last year the company sold 616,100 tonnes of grain, 248,700 tonnes of flour, of which 19,000 tonnes under export contracts, while increasing its share in the Ukrainian flour market to 13% from 12.2%.
The Agrarian Fund sold flour both in wholesale and retail batches, in particular, in trade networks under its own brand.
In addition, the company last year began selling mineral fertilizers. In 2017 some 245,400 tonnes of mineral fertilizers were purchased with a total cost of UAH 1.88 billion, of which 61,300 tonnes were supplied to agricultural producers.
PJSC Agrarian Fund was established by a government decree in the spring of 2013.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) from the World Bank Group has announced the launch of a new five-year advisory program aimed at developing the dairy industry in Ukraine.
“The five-year project, implemented in partnership with the Austrian government, is expected to help 40,000 small- and medium-scale dairy farmers access financing, boost production, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and gain access to export markets. As well as supporting the development of dairy cooperatives, it will help farmers implement climate-smart, sustainable farming practices that meet global requirements,” reads a press release from the IFC.
“Ukraine has the potential to become a low-cost producer of high-quality milk. Our new advisory program will help bring in the right expertise, skills and technology, which will help crowd-in more private investment, unlock the industry’s potential, and enable the country to become a global dairy player,” Jason Pellmar, IFC Regional Head for Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus, said.
Investing in the modernization, growth, and efficiency of the industry would also enable Ukraine to double its milk production by 2030, Pellmar added.
In the longer term, the IFC expects the advisory initiative to help bring in new investment. A one million tonne increase in production could create additional investment opportunities, estimated at about $1 billion.
