Denmark, through Nordic Environment Finance Corporation (NEFCO), has directed about EUR4.5 million in additional financing, securing the delivery of new mobile containerized boilers to Ukraine, the NEFCO press service said.
“Denmark and Ukraine are very close partners, and it is good to see that our partnership can also provide support for critical heating infrastructure in eastern Ukraine. Supporting the operation of the heat supply system is critical to the sustainability and combat effectiveness of the country. In addition, it also has a positive impact on reducing CO2 emissions in Ukraine”, – Danish Ambassador to Ukraine Ole Egberg Mikkelsen was quoted as saying.
In particular, according to him, the transferred 20 gas boilers with the capacity of 39 MW will provide central heating to more than 180 thousand people, which is 80% of the total population of the city where they will be installed. About 10% of the Ukrainians receiving assistance are internally displaced persons. The funded project will be able to provide about 30-40% of the needs of citizens in heating (the locality is not named for security reasons – IF).
Activities include installation of new boilers, laying of new pipes, preventive steps to prevent freezing of heating systems in winter and maintenance of systems to ensure their reliable continuous operation.
The new boilers will ensure more efficient heat production, consequently reducing gas consumption by some 1.70 million cubic meters per year. This will result in an annual CO2 reduction of almost 3,400 tons.
“We are very pleased to be able to continue our cooperation with the Danish Sustainable Infrastructure Finance Program Danida (DSIF) in this and other projects in Ukraine to support and green critical infrastructure. The importance of this support from Denmark cannot be underestimated and is much needed in these difficult times,” commented Nefco Investment Director Bo Nyhus.
Since 2021, NEFCO has been managing grant funds for the Danish DSIF funding program, which is funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Currently, three projects are ongoing despite the war. The goal is to create new projects and quickly rebuild infrastructure in the best quality over the next few years.
NEFCO is an international financial institution which finances the expansion of Nordic green solutions on world markets. It was founded in 1990 by Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
DSIF’s funding program is a tool within the Danish development cooperation Danida, funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. DSIF offers subsidized loans for sustainable infrastructure projects without access to commercial financing in 24 developing countries. DSIF is administered by the Investment Fund for Developing Countries (IFU), based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Only 16% of persons with disabilities are officially employed in Ukraine, Social Policy Minister Oksana Zholnovych has said.
“The existing system of employment of persons with disabilities, based on the quota principle and the system of penalties, is ineffective. As a result, only 16% of persons with disabilities are officially employed in Ukraine, while in Europe this figure reaches more than 55%”, – the press service of the ministry said with reference to Zholnovych.
According to her, the draft law No. 5344 developed by the Ministry of Social Policy, which is already being considered in the Verkhovna Rada, is intended to create new opportunities for employment of persons with disabilities.
“First of all, the bill No. 5344 is intended to increase inclusion in society, to make the conditions equal for everyone. Because today the situation is that – mainly in private business – there is a quota for the employment of people with disabilities. And if it is not met, the private sector pays a so-called “administrative economic sanction” once a year. And there are already many cases of bypassing and non-payment, employers are afraid to hire people with disabilities because they do not know how to do it, there is no systematic support and assistance to adapt such a person in the team,” said the minister.
According to her, abolishing such practices, the bill proposes three options for employers: pay an unconditional earmarked contribution to support the employment of people with disabilities; hire people with disabilities themselves and get support; buy the product from social enterprises that have already employed 50 percent or more of people with disabilities.
“Thus, the emphasis is on ensuring decent working conditions for people with disabilities, accumulating a resource and expanding support for social enterprises,” the report says.
Another problem that the bill solves, Zholnovich said, is the impossibility of state support for entrepreneurs who hire people with disabilities but whose founders are not public organizations.
“Today under the law, support from the state is only possible if the founder is a public organization. So we remove this restriction and say: any employer who hires 50 or more people with disabilities can count on support and benefits. Socially oriented business will create new, socially protected jobs,” the Minister stressed.
The head of the State Archive Service of Ukraine, Anatoliy Khromov, says that as of today, losses of documents of the National Archive Fund as a result of a full-scale war amount to up to 1.5%.
“Ukraine in 2022 has done much more to preserve its own archives compared to 1941 and to 2014. Obviously, there are huge threats, but now we estimate the loss of documents of the National Archive Fund to be up to 1.5% of the total array of those documents stored until February 24, 2022,” Khromov said at a briefing on Thursday.
In particular, according to him, because of the fire in the archival unit in the Chernihiv office of the Security Service of Ukraine, up to 13 thousand documents were actually lost, first of all those of the repressive bodies of the communist totalitarian regime.
Also, according to him, since the beginning of the full-scale war, damage to the archive premises without loss of documents has been recorded in Kharkiv, Mykolayiv and Kherson regions.
In addition, Khromov said that as a result of the temporary occupation of Kherson the regional archive was seized and looted, he noted that the loss of these documents is not irretrievable. In particular, about half of the files from the Kherson archive were stolen and later taken to Crimea.
In addition, he said, at the moment there is no information about more than 120 archival institutions, which are either under occupation or in frontline zones.
Transportation of grains and oilseeds from Ukraine to Poland by rail in 2022 increased by 27 times compared to 2021, Rafal Weber, state secretary of Polish Ministry of Infrastructure, said at the International Conference on Transport Development at European level without specifying the absolute figure.
At the same time, Mustafa Nayem, head of Ukraine’s State Agency for Infrastructure Rehabilitation and Development, who attended the conference, noted that new logistics routes may have emerged over that period.
“The activity of Central European countries was decisive in the first weeks and months of the war, so that new logistic routes could have appeared,” his words were quoted by the press service of the Polish ministry on the website of the department.
Nayem stressed that the situation with the growth of traffic requires mobilization from the Polish side and further integration of transport systems of Ukraine and the EU.
Further intensification of trade flows puts Poland before the need to increase the transshipment capacity of port infrastructure, the capacity of which until recently has been a deterrent to the growth of grain shipments from Ukraine, the conference participants noted.
“Ports have to be too big to handle growing cargo flows. The Port of Gdansk is currently reaching its maximum transshipment capacity. We have to anticipate what will happen and prepare more berths,” Lukasz Greinke, director of the Port of Gdańsk, said at the conference.
Last year Poland’s largest seaports, Gdansk, Gdynia and Szczecin-Swinoujscie, handled a total of more than 133 million tons of cargo, a record, said Grzegorz Witkowski, deputy minister of infrastructure of the Republic of Poland.
He stressed that the Polish government will continue to implement ambitious projects in Polish ports, so that they can meet the challenges associated with the inclusion of the transport corridor “Baltic Sea – Black Sea – Aegean Sea” in the main Trans-European transport network TEN-T.
Ukrainian banks in 2022 issued 2 thousand mortgages worth UAH 1.96 billion – this is 5.3 times less than in 2021 by the number of such loans and 4.3 times less by volume, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) said Thursday following a monthly survey of banks.
According to his data, in December 2022 issued 405 thousand mortgages worth 500 million UAH, which is the highest figure since the beginning of a full-scale war.
Information on the issuance of mortgages in December reported four banks, the regulator said.
It is indicated that two-thirds of the number of contracts were issued before the full-scale military aggression of the Russian Federation, in January and February, and in March no mortgages were issued at all.
In September and November the demand for mortgages began to recover, and banks issued 252 mortgages worth 280 million UAH.
The share of secondary market mortgages amounted to 99% of all mortgages issued in June and December.
The results of the survey show that the average size of a loan to buy housing in the primary market in 2022 rose to 954.875 thousand UAH from 898 thousand UAH in 2021, in the secondary market – to 974 thousand UAH from 809 thousand UAH.
In the regional context, more mortgage loans in 2022 were issued in Kiev and the Kiev region. – 241 contracts worth UAH 345 million (43% of the total amount), Volyn – 48 contracts worth UAH 60 million (8%), Vinnytsia – 37 contracts worth UAH 50 million (6%) and Chernihiv – 54 contracts worth UAH 47 million (6%).
Ratio of number of Ukrainian migrants to population of recipient countries as of 03.10.2022, %
Source: Open4Business.com.ua and experts.news
