Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal during the first telephone conversation with Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland discussed the liberalization of the visa regime and the extension of the free trade agreement between the two countries.
“Was happy to have the first conversation with a faithful friend of Ukraine — Deputy PM of Canada Chrystia Freeland. Visa liberalization and expanding of the free trade agreement was discussed. It’s vital for us to have such reliable partners. Grateful for the consistent support of Ukraine,” Shmyhal wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
Ukraine’s economy will shrink by 3.5% in 2020 due to the coronavirus-related crisis, while the global economy will lose 5.2% overall, the World Bank announced this in the updated Global Economic Prospects on Tuesday. “The depth of the contraction will depend on the duration of the health crisis, progress on major pending reforms, and the ability to mobilize adequate financing to meet sizable repayment needs,” the World Bank said.
According to the bank, next year the growth of the Ukrainian economy will resume at a rate of 3%, which is lower than the expected recovery of the global economy at 4.2%.
The World Bank said that compared with the previous forecast in January of this year, it worsened expectations of the dynamics of Ukraine’s GDP this year by 7.2 percentage points (pp), and in the next – by 1.2 pp.
Capital investment in Ukraine in January-March this year fell by 35.5% after growing by 21.2% in the fourth quarter of last year, the State Statistics Service said on Tuesday.
According to the State Statistics Service, in the first quarter of this year, UAH 76.914 billion of capital investment was disbursed (excluding the temporarily occupied Crimea, Sevastopol and the territories of Luhansk and Donetsk regions).
Raiffeisen Bank International, an Austrian banking group that includes Raiffeisen Bank Aval (Kyiv), has moved the development of its digital banking to Ukraine, according to the Austrian publication Der Standart.
“Software developers (IT was divided into about 30 small flexible divisions) worked on the corresponding applications called Digital Banking Engine for some time. The team in Vienna consisted of 45 people, 33 of whom are internal employees. However, at the end of May the project was moved to Ukraine. IT staff was informed about this on May 25,” the publication said.
The Ukrainian IT company Edenlab will be engaged in further development.
Raiffeisen Bank International is an international banking group headquartered in Vienna. It has almost 47,000 employees, 16.7 million customers and about 2,000 branches, most of which are located in central and eastern Europe.
DCH Group owned by businessman Oleksandr Yaroslavsky is a strategic partner of Turkish company Makyol, which as part of the Black Sea Consortium won a tender for the construction of a road through the Barabashovo Market in Kharkiv worth UAH 96.2 million, the press service of DCH Group told Interfax-Ukraine.
“DCH is a local strategic partner of Makyol that provides consultations on a wide range of issues, including contacts in the business environment and project management,” it said.
In February 2020, Yaroslavsky, who is the president and owner of DCH Group, said that he was working with a strategic international partners.
“It is a well-known company. We are ready to open up a new for DCH sphere together with it,” he told reporters during a road construction forum titled “Sewing Ukraine Together.”
Makyol was set up in 1965. It is one of the largest construction companies in Turkey. The company’s core business is infrastructure development (roads, subway, airports, irrigation dams, tunnels, bridges), commercial and residential real estate, as well as investment in tourism.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he himself is not afraid of the coronavirus, and that even wanted to fall ill with the disease in order to show Ukrainians what it is like, but later abandoned the idea. “I wanted to go through it myself. To make it easier for people. Once when we were all depressed, we got together and I suggested, ‘Let me fall ill with the disease and immediately isolate myself at Bankova [the street on which the President’s Office is located]. I will survive the disease and show people what it is like. I wanted to do this so people would understand it is not the plague and that we will all die [of COVID-19],” Zelensky said in an interview with the Ukrainska Pravda ezine on June 3-4.
The president said he later abandoned the idea because “it was too much.”
“It was not difficult to do. But, of course, my family wouldn’t have forgiven me. They would have said I am crazy. And, in principle, they would have been right,” the president said.
