Sales of bicycles and electric scooters on the website of Ukraine’s largest online retailer Rozetka have doubled since the beginning of May, the company’s press service told Interfax-Ukraine.
“Apart from the annual growth in sales of goods in the spring, this season it is due, among other things, to difficulties with the supply of fuel for cars,” said Rozetka co-founder Vladislav Chechetkin.
He said that the peak of purchases of bicycles and electric scooters on rozetka.com.ua fell on May 9-15.
“Probably, the first week of the month our customers hoped that the fuel shortage would end soon. However, the situation dragged on, and the weather on the street has improved in the meantime. Demand for environmentally friendly transport shows that Ukrainians Chechetkin believes.
He also said that since mid-May, the demand for courier delivery has grown.
The concentration of land in one hand by leasing land plots from their owners over the years of independence has led to the degradation of the Ukrainian agricultural industry, this problem can be solved by legally operating associations of landowners, consolidating in matters of growing and selling crops, head of the Ukrainian Association of Land Owners Roman Holovin said.
At a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Thursday, he noted that the main problem of land lease relations in Ukraine is the concentration of land in one hand. Thus, 10% of the country’s agricultural land is concentrated in the ten largest Ukrainian tenants.
In addition, the user of the land, who is not its owner, is not interested in investing in the land asset, as well as in the further processing of agricultural products and the development of animal husbandry, the expert explains.
Holovin specified that the launch of the land market in 2021 did not change the situation for the better for the land owner, but continued the concentration of land in the hands of tenants. With its appearance, the rent for agricultural plots did not increase, the owner of the land did not receive the right to dispose of the land without the permission of the tenant, and the lease agreement is almost impossible to terminate. According to the expert, due to lack of prospects and intimidation by tenants, land owners are increasingly deciding to sell land for next to nothing.
“Ukraine found itself in a situation of a dead end in the implementation of land relations, which led to the decline of the agricultural sector, gave rise to socio-economic and socio-political contradictions and conflicts. Such land relations do not exist in any civilized country,” the head of the union emphasized during the press conference.
Holovin noted that associations of land owners are capable of resolving this issue, which consolidate joint efforts to sell their crops at the highest possible price, resolve the issues of production services and hiring subcontractors, accounting and tax administration. Such public independent management of land through participation in the community of land owners created by Holovin makes it possible to receive profit from the use of land by its owner 2-2.5 times more than non-public (shadow) agriculture, or management through the registration of the land owner as a private entrepreneur.
The community of land owners is a legal entity created by uniting land owners to consolidate the use of land plots in independent agricultural activities, at the same time socially significant for its participants, the society and the state as a whole. The organization is a single taxpayer of the fourth group and a value added tax payer, which implies a special taxation regime for the community and the owner of the land entering it.
“The community does not pay income tax, which means that the owner of the land does not pay it either. The land owner participating in the community does not pay the minimum tax liability (UAH 1,500-2,000 per ha of land), land tax (UAH 300-600 per ha), personal income tax (UAH 2,000-8,000 per ha of land) in the form of a tax liability and does not pay social security tax (22% of income received),” the expert specified.
At the same time, he clarified that community members have the opportunity to sell their crops at market value with VAT refunds, while individual farmers who grow agricultural products without state registration are forced to sell them 40-50% cheaper due to the lack of documents confirming their ownership of the crop.
Also, the community has the right to VAT refunds on the purchase of goods and services, pays a single tax in the amount of 0.95% of the normative monetary value of the cultivated land. In addition, it maintains personal accounting records for each participant, which means accounting for personal expenses and personal profits.
According to Holovin, the above tax and administrative preferences allow a land owner who independently cultivates land through participation in the community to have a significant advantage over illegal land owners and landlords. This way of managing allows him to receive an average of UAH 12,000-20,000 of profit per hectare of land.
According to his calculations, with a crop value of UAH 28,000/ha, the land owner can receive UAH 8,000-12,000 per hectare by optimizing taxation and accounting, and with a crop value of UAH 42,000/ha, he will earn UAH 14,000-22,000/ha.
“In the system of self-management, the income of millions of land owners is significantly increased, control of the agricultural sector and its centralized support are ensured, and most importantly, the country’s food security is guaranteed,” he summed up.
The Austrian company iC consulenten ZT GmbH will develop a master plan for the restoration of Trostyanets (Sumy region), Mayor Yuriy Bova said.
“We agreed with iC consulenten ZT GmbH to work together on the concept of restoring the future of Trostyanets – a safe, environmentally friendly, comfortable city,” the mayor said on Facebook after a meeting with representatives of the company in Vienna.
According to him, the company will do the work for free. The development will take three to four months.
iC consulenten is an engineering and consulting company that is part of the Austrian iC group. The company is represented in more than 100 countries. Started working in Ukraine in 2013. Among the projects of iC consulenten in Ukraine are the technical supervision of the construction of the Zaporozhye bridge, the implementation of traffic management systems in Lviv, technical support for the project of energy modernization of municipal buildings, etc.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky announced his intention to build another Mriya aircraft, dedicating this project to the memory of the pilots who died in the war, including during the defense of Mariupol.
During an online meeting with Ukrainian students on Thursday, he recalled that at one time there was an idea to build a second copy of this unique aircraft.
“We wanted to build it, we needed 800 million dollars. I turned to the President of Turkey with a proposal to build the 2nd MRIYA, but we did not find the money,” he said,
“But in this case, this is not a matter of money, it is a matter of ambition. Ukroboronprom, the Antonov team contacted us. This is a matter of the image of our state and all the excellent professional pilots who died in this war,” Zelensky also said.
He called them “heroic people”. “How much they did, today you can already say how much they saved the lives of people who remained in Mariupol, especially at Azovstal … How many pilots gave their lives to bring everything there, from weapons to water. And how many wounded they took from there A large number of these people died heroically,” the president said.
“Building MRIYA for the sake of the memory of heroes is the right state position,” Zelensky stressed.
The world’s largest transport aircraft “Mriya” was destroyed during the battles for the airport “Gostomel” at the end of February 2022.
An-225 “Mriya” is an aviation giant, which holds records for the transportation of the maximum commercial cargo and the longest and heaviest monocargo in the history of aviation, carrying capacity.
Civilian casualties from February 24, when Russia started the war against Ukraine, to 24:00 on May 18 amounted to 8,089 civilians (the day before – 7,964), including 3,811 dead (3,778), reports the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Thursday.
“OHCHR believes that the actual figures are much higher as information is delayed from some areas of heavy fighting and many reports are still awaiting confirmation,” the UN data document notes.
According to him, this applies, for example, to Mariupol (Donetsk region), Izyum (Kharkiv region) and Popasna (Luhansk region), where there are reports of numerous civilian casualties. They are subject to further verification and are not included in the above statistics.
“The majority of civilian deaths or injuries were caused by the use of explosive devices with a wide area of effect, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems, as well as rocket and air strikes,” the report says.
According to confirmed UN data, 1,429 men, 937 women, 98 boys and 87 girls died, while the sex of 70 children and 1,190 adults has not yet been determined.
Among the 4,278 injured were 115 boys and 103 girls, as well as 164 children whose gender has not yet been determined.
Compared with the report the day before, four children died.
OHCHR indicates that in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions at midnight on May 19, 1973 (1946) deaths and 1821 (1761) injured were recorded in the territory controlled by the government, and 126 (124) deaths and 502 (492) injured in the territory controlled by the self-proclaimed “republics”.
In other regions of Ukraine under government control (in Kyiv, as well as in Zhytomyr, Zaporozhye, Kyiv, Sumy, Odessa, Nikolaev, Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnepropetrovsk, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions), the UN recorded 1712 (1708) dead and 1955 (1930) wounded .
The summary traditionally states that the increase in figures from the previous summary should not be attributed only to the cases on May 18, since during this period the Office verified a number of cases from previous days.
Canada, which has allocated 1 billion Canadian dollars (about $780 million at the current exchange rate) of financial support to Ukraine in its next budget, remains the only country that intends to use a special account administered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to send this assistance.
“The account allows donors to channel further support to Ukraine securely, through loans or grants, using our fiduciary infrastructure. Canada has a billion in its upcoming budget. I am not aware of any other pledges or commitments at this time. We will keep you posted,” he said. IMF Representative Gerry Rice at a traditional briefing in Washington on Thursday.
When asked about the Fund’s exchange rate advice, in particular the advisability of adjusting the fixed rate policy chosen at the start of the war, the IMF spokesperson said that he “is not aware of any specific advice that we have given regarding the adjustment at this time.”
Rice also said that the Fund remains in very close contact with the Ukrainian authorities, almost daily, in particular, a few days ago there was another conversation between IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
As reported, on February 24, the National Bank suspended the work of the foreign exchange market of Ukraine, except for the sale of foreign currency, and fixed the exchange rate at the official level of that day – UAH 29.2549/$1, which led to the emergence of a “black” market, where in the first days the exchange rate reached 39-40 UAH/$1. Later, the regulator allowed the sale of currency in branches that are under the threat of capture by the invaders, by decision of their leadership.
The NBU made the next liberalization step on April 15, when it granted banks and non-banking financial institutions the right to sell cash currency throughout the country at a rate not higher than “official plus 10%”, but within the volume of the purchased currency. As a result, many banks declared the possibility of selling foreign currency at the maximum possible rate of UAH 32.17-32.18/$1 and at the same time raised the purchase rate closer to the selling rate. However, according to market participants, it is extremely difficult to freely officially buy cash currency. Nevertheless, the “black” market reacted with a slight strengthening of the hryvnia, as a result of which the dollar exchange rate on it was only about 2% higher. Now this difference has increased to about 14%.
