President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has appointed Yulia Kovaliv to the post of Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine.
The corresponding decree of September 20, 2019 was posted on the presidential website on Monday.
Kovaliv is head of the office of the National Investment Council under the President of Ukraine, former first deputy minister of economic development and trade of Ukraine, ex-member of the National Commission for Energy, Housing and Utilities Services Regulation (NCER) and ex-head of the supervisory board of Naftogaz Ukrainy.
U.S. President Donald Trump has said in his telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky he said nothing wrong. “The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, want to stay as far away as possible from the Joe Biden demand that the Ukrainian Government fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son, or they won’t get a very large amount of U.S. money, so they fabricate a story about me and a perfectly fine and routine conversation I had with the new President of Ukraine!” Trump said on Twitter on Saturday.
Trump said, “Nothing was said that was in any way wrong, but Biden’s demand, on the other hand, was a complete and total disaster.”
Biden earlier called on Trump to make public the transcript of the conversation with Zelensky. The call came after media reported that a U.S. intelligence officer complained about the U.S. president because of “troublesome promise” to the foreign leader (perhaps referencing Ukraine and its president).
Biden said in a statement, “[Trump] used the power and resources of the United States to pressure a sovereign nation—a partner that is still under direct assault from Russia—pushing Ukraine to subvert the rule of law in the express hope of extracting a political favor.”
The men’s national team of Ukraine defeated the Belgian team and reached the quarterfinals of the European Volleyball Championship.
The game was held in Belgian Antwerp.
The national team of Ukraine defeated Belgium in 1/8 European Championship with a score of 3:2 according to the results of five sets (25:22, 21:25, 14:25, 25:18, 15:10).
Ukrainians will meet with the Serbs in the quarter finals on September 24.
Competitions are held in Slovenia, France, Belgium and the Netherlands from September 12 to September 29.
EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP, NATIONAL TEAM, QUARTER-FINALS, VOLLEYBALL
The transport companies of Ukraine in January-August 2019 carried 2.808 billion people, which was 5.9% down year-over-year (y-o-y), the country’s State Statistics Service has reported.
Transport companies’ passenger traffic for the reporting period was 72.4 billion passenger-kilometers, which was 4.5% up on January-August last year, it said.
In the eight months of 2019, some 105.3 million passengers were transported by rail (local commuter train services included), which was 0.5% down on January-August 2018, while 1.203 billion passengers were carried by road (5.3% down), the State Statistics Service said.
Transportation of passengers by air grew by 10.9%, to 9.1 million people.
In addition, in January-August 2019, some 407.1 million passengers used the services of trams (9.5% down y-o-y), 465.5 million travelled by subway (1.8% down), and 618.4 million people used trolleybuses (8.5% down), the statistics agency said.
Passenger transportation by water increased by 10.3% y-o-y, to 0.5 million people.
The State Statistics Service said the report did not cover temporarily occupied territory of Crimea, Sevastopol and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Businesses plan their 2020 budgets with the forex trade set at UAH 28 per U.S. dollar, according to the “Global Outlook” study by the European Business Association (EBA).
“When planning the budget for next year, owners use the average forex rate at UAH 28 per U.S. dollar. According to investors, the hryvnia will continue strengthening, as last year the rate was at UAH 30 per U.S. dollar,” EBA Executive Director Anna Derevyanko said while presenting the findings of the study in Kyiv on Monday.
As many as 104 top managers of EBA member companies were surveyed in August 2019 during the study. Some 77% of those polled expect their business will develop in 2020, with 45% of CEOs forecasting revenue growth by 10-20%.
At the same time, compared with the forecast for 2019, the number of companies that intend to expand staff has decreased. As the survey showed, 47% of companies plan to leave the number of employees at the level of last year, and 46% of CEOs shared plans for expanding their staff (last year their share was 58%), Derevyanko’s cited the results of the survey.
Only 33% of companies intend to launch new investment projects in Ukraine in 2020, the study indicates.
At the same time, more than 90% of CEOs are going to raise employees’ salaries by 5-10%, the survey showed.
The study was conducted for the fourth year in a row.
Ukraine should enter the TOP-3 countries in the field of open data in three years, said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov during the opening of the Open Data Forum in Kyiv on Friday.
“My goal is to make everything for Ukraine to enter the TOP-3 countries in the field of open data in the world in three years since we have support from the president, the prime minister and all ministers,” he said.
Fedorov also said that the team of the Ministry of Digital Transformation has already been formed. The deputies will be introduced on September 27, and officially they will take office on October 1.
“Until October 1, we have the task to officially install our deputies in the office. I will have a very strong team of deputies. Then, based on the functions and our goals, we will communicate with you and implement projects in the coordinate system,” said the deputy prime minister.
