The Association of Taxpayers of Ukraine has announced the results of the rating “Honest Taxpayers – 2020”. For the second year in a row, the Avtostrada Group of Companies won in the Road Construction category.
The High Rating Commission assessed, in particular, the completeness and timeliness of taxes and fees payment, compliance with tax discipline, the number of officially employed persons, participation in social programs and charity events, and more.
Avtostrada Group of Companies is one of the largest taxpayers in the road construction sector of Ukraine. The company undergoes an annual audit of financial statements in accordance with international standards, having transparent business conduct and social responsibility as key priorities.
“Transparent business management, audit of financial statements according to international standards, high level of tax burden, full and timely payment of all taxes and fees – these are main company’s principles from the first days of its establishment. And it’s such a pleasure that our approach is praised by independent experts. Paid taxes are an investment in the country’s welfare and a contribution to our future. I’m grateful to the Taxpayers’ Association for the important initiative and organization of the rating!” – Maksym Shkil, the founder of the Avtostrada Group of Companies, commented on the award.
The Association has been determining the nominations for 10 years, and it’s an anniversary rating. The main purpose of the rating is to strengthen the role and authority of the taxpayer and increase the overall culture of tax payment in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Icelandic Foreign Minister Þórdís Kolbrún R. Gylfadóttir signed an agreement on air services at the meeting of the OSCE Foreign Ministers Council in Stockholm.
“The agreement creates the possibility of regular direct flights between Ukraine and Iceland,” the press service of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.
The document defines the procedure for regulating international flights between the two countries and the procedure for the designation of airlines, establishes the conditions for granting permits for regular flights, provides for the mutual recognition of crew member certificates, and contains provisions for aviation security.
In addition, the agreement establishes a mechanism for the inspection of airlines to assess their compliance with the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization.
Ukraine exported 1,640 tonnes of seeds to the countries of the European Union in January-October 2021, which is twice the figures for the entire 2020 (820 tonnes) and 5 times more than in 2019 (320 tonnes), according a Thursday posting on the website of the State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection.
“Opening the European market for us is a 10-year way. Negotiations on the recognition of domestic seeds as compliant with EU requirements began in 2011 and lasted a very long time. Now, we have every opportunity to benefit from the many years of work of negotiators – dozens of people from business and government,” the authority quoted its head Vladyslava Mahaletska speaking at the online conference Seed Forum 2021.
According to the authority, in January-October 2021, 1,210 tonnes of corn seeds, 330 tonnes of wheat seeds, and 50 tonnes of sunflower seeds and all other crops in total were exported to the EU.
To open the export of seeds from Ukraine and to comply with the phytosanitary requirements of the EU, in 2021 17 areas in Ukraine on a total of 673 hectares were assigned the status of pest-free, to be able to grow seed on them.
The Lithuanian company Snaige, the only manufacturer of household refrigerators and freezing equipment in the Baltic countries, in January-September 2021 reduced its revenue in Ukraine by 36.7% compared to the same period in 2020 – to EUR2.849 million.
According to the unaudited financial statements of the company, in the specified period it received EUR1,000 of profit in Ukraine against a loss of EUR2,000 a year earlier.
As reported, in the first half of 2021, Snaige’s profit in Ukraine also amounted to EUR1,000, and its revenue decreased by 4.5% – to EUR2.26 million.
According to the report, the overall consolidated unaudited turnover of Snaige for January-September 2021 increased by 16% compared to the same period last year – to almost EUR26 million.
According to Mindaugas Sologubas, the CEO of AB Snaigė, the increase in sales did not compensate for the increase in the company’s costs due to the rise in prices for raw materials and transport. He noted that the rise in prices and shortages of raw materials, as well as disruptions in the supply chain affected the quality of sales and the end result of the company.
“Due to a shortage of raw materials and delivery delays, we were unable to complete some orders on time. We often had to produce what we could produce, rather than what we needed,” he said.
For the three quarters of 2021, AB Snaigė exported 93% of its products sold to almost 30 countries in Europe, Asia and Africa (a year earlier, the share of exports was 84%).
The largest foreign sales markets were Germany (24%), Ukraine (14%), Morocco (8%), Austria (8%) and the Czech Republic (7%).
As reported, in January-September 2020, Ukraine was the largest export market of the company with a share of 21% of the turnover.
Investments in research and development (R&D) and precision farming in the long term will allow raising investment in GDP by more than 30 times, professor of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) Oleh Nivievsky said during a panel discussion at Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.
“One dollar of investment in research in the agricultural sector produces an average of $ 32 in national wealth in the long term. Compared to investment in infrastructure, the figure there is up to $ 5 per dollar invested in it. Accordingly, the potential of agricultural R&D is much higher than it might seem,” he stressed.
In addition, according to the expert, for the Ukrainian conditions of investment in agrarian R&D with the simultaneous introduction of precision farming methods, this indicator can be increased by 10%.
The panel discussion on the development of precision farming was also attended by Olha Trofimtseva, the President of the Ukrainian Agri-Food Platform; Serhiy Sychevsky, Bayer business development manager; Dmytro Zaitsev, the head of the precision farming service of Continental Farmers Group agricultural holding; head of the precision farming and telemetry department in Ukraine, Moldova, Scandinavia and the Baltic States at CNH Ukraine Mykola Chornonos; Kyrylo Druzhinin, the director for innovation at Agrain.
“If the technology responds to one of two questions: to make working conditions easier for a person or to improve its results, then it already makes sense to study it. Further, the area of the field is studied, what crops are planted on it, what technology and production culture we have,” Continental representative Zaitsev explained the approach to the introduction of precision farming.
Representative of Agrain agricultural holding Druzhinin, in turn, clarified that the methods of introducing precision farming can differ significantly for agricultural holdings with thousands of hectares in processing and for farmers with a land bank of tens of hectares. According to him, another trend in precision farming will be a reduction in the number of workers in agriculture and a change in the demand for professions: for example, now tractor drivers in an agricultural holding are more likely to perform the functions of operators controlling the autonomous operation of machines.
“The progress that we have in technology is just the space. If you look at machinery as a thing that performs some kind of operation instead of you, you will not see progress. But if you look at it as a way to facilitate work and a means of reducing costs, then we have the fact of a technological revolution that is taking place before our eyes,” Druzhinin emphasized.
According to him, at present, Agrain has practically completed the transfer of equipment to the autonomous processing of fields, when agricultural machines can independently move along the specified navigation lines not only in a straight line, but also turn around in the aisle.
Serhiy Sychevsky clarified that one of the problems of the widespread introduction of autonomous machinery is the small number of innovative machines in Ukraine that is capable of generating data on movement, which can be read and used by equipment from other manufacturers in the future. He cited the estimates of Bayer, according to which in Ukraine now only about 20% of combines and seeders can generate high-quality navigation data for autonomous operation.
“I will make a small emphasis: at the Agritech exhibition in Germany, we will offer a solution that we will also offer in Ukraine. It will allow increasing the number of compatible combines that can generate such information in the fields,” Bayer’s business development manager said.
The representative of CNH Ukraine, Mykola Chornonos, emphasized a significant shortage of personnel capable of developing the direction of precision farming, especially specialists in the field of data analytics and machine learning. During the discussion, the participants supported the opinion that not a single educational institution in Ukraine prepares specialists in this industry, while agricultural companies themselves are engaged in their training “from scratch.”
He also noted the need for the state to determine strategic directions for the development of the agro-industrial complex and initiate development in them.
“If you look, in recent years, there has been an increase in the service orientation of the agro-industrial complex. In fact, all manufacturing companies are switching to service models of cooperation with their end customers. One of the good cases where you can see this transformation is the drone market, which is growing every year. This year if I’m not mistaken, their growth was 700%. Where else can you see this?” Olha Trofimtseva said.
Despite such volumes of market growth, such companies are gradually switching to a service model of work, selling not only equipment, but also services for their maintenance.
ADDED VALUE, AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH, CHORNONOS, CLUB OF EXPERTS, DRUZHININ, INVESTMENTS, NIVIEVSKY, SYCHEVSKY, TROFIMTSEVA, ZAITSEV
Doctors from the Adonis medical group have performed a unique operation to form a neovagina for a foreign patient.
The clinic told Interfax-Ukraine the foreign patient came to the medical center with a congenital malformation of the intestines and pelvic organs.
Before contacting the Adonis medical group for an operation to create a neovagina, the patient underwent about ten reconstructive surgeries in various clinics of the countries of the former USSR, where, as a result, by a council of leading medical centers, she was denied an operation to form a neovagina. In addition, among the 13 clinics in Turkey, to which the patient applied, only one agreed to consider the possibility of such an operation.
“The complexity of the operation was the extremely high risk of injury to the intestines and urinary tract during the operation, as well as the possibility of lining the neovaginal tunnel with the patient’s own tissues. At the same time, after weighing all the risks, we successfully performed the operation,” the leading specialist in laparoscopic and minimally invasive interventions at Adonis, gynecologist-surgeon Dmytro Nikolayev said.
Currently, the patient has been discharged and has flown to her homeland.
Adonis is a network of private full-cycle medical centers for adults and children.
The private clinic Adonis was founded over 20 years ago. The network includes 11 branches in Kyiv and the region, including two of its own maternity hospitals and a stem cell laboratory. The clinic has 66 medical specialties.
