Germany’s Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (DEG) has approved $20 million financing to Astarta agricultural holding.
“The project will help the company to secure long-term working capital financing and capital expenditure program,” the company said in a report on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE).
According to a posting on DEG’s website, the financing is long-term one, but no other details are presented.
The German corporation said that some funds will be sent to buy newest equipment and modernization of production technology to cut natural resource consumption.
DEG is a subsidiary of Germany’s KfW development bank.
Astarta is a vertically integrated agribusiness holding operating in eight regions of Ukraine. The holding includes eight sugar factories, agricultural enterprises with a land bank of 243,000 hectares and dairy farms, a biogas plant and a soybean processing complex in Poltava region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky believes that Ukraine can build warships on its own, and not just order them abroad.
At a press briefing in Ochakiv on Wednesday night following the examination of three warships returned by Russia, the head of state told reporters that a contract between Ukraine and France on the production of a batch of patrol vessels and technical support services for them is important to Ukraine, however support for domestic shipbuilding should be a priority.
“I’ll be honest, this contract was prepared before my presidency. Today I support this contract. Anyway, our own production is more important to us, [we should] support Mykolaiv and the region so that professionals, who have left because nothing had been constructed here for many years, return home,” the president said.
Zelensky added that Ukrainian Navy Commander Ihor Voronchenko presented him a shipbuilding development strategy.
“We are planning to build corvettes. We have a plan, although you know that any plan should have a real deadline and be supported by the budget,” he said.
In turn, Voronchenko recalled that Ukraine is planning to build four corvettes by 2028.
As reported, a new version of the Corvette State Program approved by the government in November 2017 provides for the construction of four corvettes for the Ukrainian Navy by 2028. The construction of the lead ship will be finished in 2022.
Metinvest, the largest Ukrainian mining and metallurgical holding, is forced to reduce the implementation of its investment program in 2019 due to the severe global crisis over the past ten years. According to a company’s report, metallurgical industry is entering the toughest global crisis in ten years. Many metallurgical companies in the world are already operating with losses and are forced to cut production and personnel.
“Given a lack of financial resources and disappointing forecasts regarding further steel prices, Metinvest Group has developed an action plan that will help overcome the difficult economic situation with minimal losses,” the report says.
It says that Metinvest is forced to reduce the implementation of the investment program in 2019: the implementation of certain projects, except for critical ones provided for by the technological strategy, and projects with significant environmental effects will be suspended. In addition, an optimization program will be implemented to reduce fixed and administrative costs.
The group is forced to suspend staff recruitment for existing vacancies and limit the recruitment of people to the position of employees who have decided to quit, with the exception of critical professions. The matter does not concern mass cuts in production: optimization measures will concern, first of all, the administrative staff and the management company. At the beginning of 2020, administrative staff will be reduced by 30%. At the same time, employment programs for employees will be developed jointly with the city authorities.
The Polish fashion retailer LPP Group, managing the brands Reserved, Cropp, House, Mohito, Sinsay, in July-September 2019 increased sales in Ukraine by 39.2% compared to the same period in 2018, to PLN 127.6 million (about $33 million). According to the company’s financial report, LPP’s total revenue from sales in the third quarter grew by 14.9%, exceeding PLN 2.3 billion (about $605.6 million). At the same time, one of the highest sales growth dynamics was recorded in Ukraine.
In general, over the nine months, LPP increased sales in Ukraine by 33.1%, to PLN 321.8 million (about $83 million), while sales of the entire group grew by 12.6%, to PLN 6.389 billion ($1.65 billion).
In addition, it is reported that in September the retailer opened an online store of its own brands in Ukraine, which became the 13th e-commerce market for LPP Group.
“Adapting to the prevailing trend associated with the increasing popularity of online shopping, we are taking steps to further develop this sales channel. We implement this development through our own online stores. This gives us direct access to clients, control over goods and the absence of intermediaries. In the second half of 2019, the group launched an online store for all EU countries and for Ukraine,” the report said.
LPP S.A. was established in 1995. The first store (Reserved) was opened in 2000.
Ambassador of the European Union (EU) to Ukraine Matti Maasikas has said that the European Union will continue supporting Ukraine on the way of reforms and European integration. Tomorrow Ukraine marks the 6th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolution of Dignity, which radically changed and reoriented the modern history of the country, he said at a meeting of the Ukrainian government on Wednesday. He said that the Ukrainian people have already paid and continue to pay a high price for the European choice. The country took up this challenge while it is defending its territorial integrity and sovereignty, he said.
For the sake of the values and principles that we share, you can count on the indestructible support of the European Union, Maasikas said.
Speaking about the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, Maasikas said that it is the contractual basis of Ukraine-EU bilateral relations.
He said that among the vital reforms are the fight against corruption, progress in the field of digital technologies, energy, and environmental protection.
“The demand for reforms in these areas will sound louder from your citizens than our requests to fulfill the obligations of the agreement,” the ambassador said.
He also said that since 2014, the EU has mobilized EUR 15 billion in grants and loans to support reforms in Ukraine.
The EU welcomes the government’s intentions to deepen cooperation in the energy and digital space, Maasikas said.
The Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) has interviewed 562 witnesses as part of pretrial investigation into 13 criminal cases featuring the fifth Ukrainian president and current member of parliament Petro Poroshenko. Investigators ordered 35 forensic studies, including 27 in the criminal probe concerning the actions of sailors crossing the Strait of Kerch, the SBI press service said in a statement.
Shares in and material assets belonging to the Kuznia on Rybalsky (Kuznya na Rybalskomu, formerly known as Leninska Kuznia) plant were frozen, as were the money of Priamyi television channel owner Volodymyr Makeyenko on bank accounts, totally, 31 million euros.
Investigators also sent 20 requests for international penal assistance, including 14 in the criminal probe into Poroshenko illegally crossing the Ukrainian border on a forged passport.
The SBI has published a full list of criminal cases featuring Poroshenko on suspicions as follows:
– The voyage of Ukrainian naval ships across the Strait of Kerch, which resulted in an escalation of the conflict with Russia and the introduction of martial law in Ukraine with the a view to possible usurping power;
– Takeover of state power including forging of official documents when submitting the candidacy of Ukrainian prime minister in the absence of a coalition in the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada;
– The alleged loss of material carriers of classified information containing state secret (the situation room in the Presidential Administration building);
– An illegal transfer across the Ukrainian state border by means of using a forged passport (Maldives); an illegal detention of Mikheil Saakashvili and his illegal deportation to Poland;
– Organizing and exercising an illegal sending of Mykola Chaus across Ukrainian border to Moldova;
– The invalidation of the decision of the president of the Pervomaisk District State Administration in the Mykolaiv region with regard to adding a land parcel located in the territory of the Leninsk rural council to the state reserve land;
– Tax evasion and further legalization (laundering) of criminal proceeds from the sale of Kuznia na Rybalskomu;
– Tax evasion and further legalization (laundering) of criminal proceeds from the sale of LLC TELEVISION CHANNEL PRIAMYI;
– An unlawful acquisition of assets belonging to the Ukrainian Association of the Blind’s recreation compound Ivashka by Soyuz Invest LLC employees;
– Unlawful influence on the contest during the selection of candidates for members of the Supreme Council of Justice in March-May 2019, holding the contest within a short period of time and issuing possibly unlawful orders to change the contest procedure;
– Abuse of office and interferences with the work of judges in Ukrainian courts by way of untimely appointing them as such, which had serious implications such as inappropriate payment of their wages from the Ukrainian state budget;
– Meddling in the work of the judges of the Kyiv District Administrative Court on the part of the Ukrainian president, members of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council with regard to the decision on rescinding the nationalization of PrivatBank.
“All the information is published in accordance with Article 222 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine,” the SBI said.
