The German government through the Reconstruction Credit Institution (KfW) will lend EUR32.5 million to Ukrenergo to restore eight high-voltage substations in the south and west of Ukraine, the company said.
According to its Facebook post on Friday, Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko and NEC Board Chairman Volodymyr Kudrytsky signed the relevant agreements with KfW. This is NEC’s third project with the German state bank KfW, through which its government is providing financial support to Ukrenergo.
“These funds will already be working in the interests of Ukrainian consumers in the near future: equipment will be installed at the substations that will make it possible to control their work remotely from the central dispatcher’s office. The restored substations will be automated, require minimal staff and meet ENTSO-E requirements for reliability of the power transmission system and grid safety,” explained Ukrenergo.
The company expressed its sincere gratitude to its European partners for their timely assistance, which is very much needed today.
For its part, the Ministry of Finance said on its website that its head during a meeting with Anka Feldhusen, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Germany to Ukraine, signed a guarantee agreement with KfW for the new project “Increasing the Efficiency of Power Transmission (Substation Modernization) II”, and Ukrenergo head signed a loan agreement with KfW for EUR32.5 million for this project.
During the meeting there were also signed agreements on debt deferral between the government of Ukraine and KfW, the Ministry of Finance pointed out.
According to its report, an agreement was reached to postpone repayment of Ukraine’s debt under the attracted loans from KfW under the four existing projects from 2022-2023 to 2027-2031.
The Northern Mining and Processing Plant (SevGOK, Krivoy Rog, Dnipropetrovsk Region), which is part of Metinvest Group, intends to implement a technology to replace natural gas with solid biofuel.
According to the materials available to Interfax-Ukraine agency, the planned activity is “implementation of the technology of natural gas substitution by solid biofuel (chopped sunflower husk), installation of complex facilities and equipment, which will be connected to Lurgi-552 A, B roasting machines without any essential changes in the existing equipment”.
It is specified that the new construction of the complex of facilities for biofuel supply is expected to be carried out at the industrial site of SevGokhoz.
The timing of the project and the amount of its costs are not disclosed.
Northern Mining Company is one of the largest mining companies in Europe, which specializes in the production of iron ore concentrate with iron content of 65.8% and pellets with iron content of 63%. Its production capacity exceeds 13 mln tonnes of concentrate and approximately 8 mln tonnes of pellets a year. The enterprise includes the Pervomaysky and Annovsky open pits, two beneficiation plants, two pelletizing shops and auxiliary infrastructure.
SevGOK is part of Metinvest group, whose major shareholders are System Capital Management PJSC (SCM, Donetsk) (71.24%) and Smart Holding group of companies (23.76%).
The management company of the Metinvest group is Metinvest Holding LLC.
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A dry cargo ship with more than 32,000 tons of corn left the Ukrainian port on Friday, the Joint Coordination Center (JCC) reported.
“On December 16, the vessel Almeray left the port of Odessa, it is carrying a total of 32.4 thousand tons of corn to Libya as part of the Black Sea grain initiative,” the report said.
There are two dry-cargo ships headed for Ukrainian ports, which on December 16 passed through the maritime humanitarian corridor.
“As of December 16, the total tonnage of grain and other agricultural products exported from the three Ukrainian ports is 14,023,297 tons. A total of 1,112 vessels were allowed to move so far: 556 to arrive at Ukrainian ports and 556 to leave them,” summarized the JCC.
It is noted that from December 1 to 15, more than 1.6 million tons of Ukrainian food products were shipped to other countries.
As many as 13 million tons were shipped on December 5, 12 million tons on November 26, 11 million tons on November 16, 10 million tons on November 3, 9 million tons on October 28, 8 million tons on October 21, 7 million tons on October 12, 6 million tons on October 5 and 5 million tons on September 28.
Net sales of dollars by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) increased for the fourth week in a row, and this time significantly – to $834.1 million from $580.8 million a week earlier.
According to the National Bank on its website, it bought $7.3 million from November 12 to December 16, the same as usual buying volumes during the war, while it sold $841.4 million, compared to $583.4 million a week earlier.
On the cash market, the hryvnia remained at around UAH 39.95/$1 for the week, with a narrow spread.
As we informed, the volume of interventions of the National Bank in November reduced to $1.57 billion from $2.03 billion in October and $2.75 billion in September, while international reserves increased by 10.7% – to $27.42 billion.
In general, since the beginning of the year to December 16, inclusive, the NBU bought $3 billion 250.4 million and EUR111.0 million in the market, and sold $24 billion 829.7 million and EUR1 billion 789.1 million.
Including the purchase of foreign currency has reached $2 billion 593.5 million and EUR111.0 million since the beginning of the war, while the sale – $22 billion 59.5 million and EUR1 billion 789.1 million.
The German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection is allocating an additional EUR100 million to the Energy Support Fund of Ukraine, the German Embassy in Ukraine reports.
“Today there was another massive Russian attack on Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure. International partners and Germany stand side by side with Ukraine in these dark times,” the embassy tweeted.
“By the end of the year, the fund will receive EUR130 million from Germany for the urgent needs of Ukrainian energy companies,” the German diplomatic mission said.
As reported, at a conference of solidarity with Ukraine on December 13 in Paris, German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock said that Germany would allocate EUR50 million in assistance for the winter period for Ukraine, and in total, following the results of the conference, EUR415 was announced in aid to the country’s energy sector suffering from Russian strikes.
