The Milk Alliance Group in January-June 2019 increased sales of dairy products by 8% year-over-year, to UAH 2.92 billion.
“In the first half of this year, the situation was worse than planned. In particular, we processed only about 180,000 tonnes of milk against 207,000 tonnes in the same period last year,” Chairman of Milk Alliance’s Supervisory Board Serhiy Vovchenko told Interfax -Ukraine in an interview.
In the first half of 2019, the Milk Alliance increased the production of processed cheese by 19%, to 1,300 tonnes; that of ultra-pasteurized cream by 28%, to 1,300 tonnes; fermented cheese by 11%, to 2,000 tonnes; sour cream by 5%, to 5,300 tonnes; baby food products by 4%, to 5,500 tonnes. The output of milk in different types of packaging remained at last year’s level 27,000 tonnes.
“The output of fermented milk products fell slightly (by 2% to 14,700 tonnes). The production of butter and dry cheese whey fell by 30%, because, firstly, international prices of these products became unprofitable for us, and secondly, we did not make cheese products for export in the same volumes as in previous periods,” Vovchenko said.
In total, the group increased sales of dairy products for the six months of 2019 by 8%, to UAH 2.923 billion.
“We plan to slightly change the structure of capacity utilization in the second half of the year in order to make up the lost income in the first six months of the year. Thus, we should receive revenue at the level of UAH 6.2 billion,” he said.
He pointed out that the share of export earnings in Milk Alliance’s total sales now stands at 25%, the domestic market accounts for 75%.
The share of companies planning to attract loans in the next 12 months has reached 41.5% in the second quarter of 2019 compared to 38.2% a quarter earlier, according to the results of a regular survey of enterprises’ business expectations announced by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). The largest share of such companies accounted for the manufacturing industry, those of energy and water supply, the document says.
According to the survey, enterprises, as before, prefer loans in the national currency: their share increased to 79.1% in the second quarter compared to 78.1% in the first quarter.
The National Bank noted that large enterprises, as well as those companies that conduct export-import operations are more inclined to attract loans in foreign currency.
At the same time, the share of respondents planning to attract foreign loans rose in the market up to 10.4% in the second quarter compared to 9.7% in the previous quarter.
Deputy Head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine Ruslan Riaboshapka has said new heads of Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) will be appointed in the coming months. “We have ‘lost’ the NACP chief. Probably, taking into account your harsh comments, he decided not take any risks and wrote a letter that he would not attend today’s meeting. I think that in two months we will have a new NACP head. In order to execute your instructions, a draft law has been written. We will wait for the new parliament to start work before submitting it,” Riaboshapka said on Thursday in Kyiv during a meeting of the national council on anti-corruption policy chaired by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
NACP is headed by Oleksandr Manhul.
Official rates of banking metals from national bank as of july 18
One troy ounce=31.10 grams
Mykhailo Fedorov, the adviser to the president of Ukraine, at a meeting with the representatives of Japanese business presented an action plan in the development of digital economy and got acquainted with the proposals of the foreign guests.
“Electronic services, the improvement of state registers, the e-residency project should make doing business in Ukraine easy and transparent. We are very interested in attracting investment and advanced innovations of Japan to develop joint projects in the field of the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, Smart Cities, electronic identification, the development of R&D centers, etc.,” he said.
He noted that the development of digital economy is one of the priorities of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Today we are uncompetitive in the world, ineffective – only digitalization of economic sectors can help us make the leap and achieve real economic growth. Together with the core business and the public, we defined clear objectives and goals until 2024,” the adviser said.
The representatives of Japanese business focused on the problematic issues of doing business in Ukraine, such as the complexity of interaction with the tax and migration services, hiring workers, etc., as well as the key interests of Japanese business [in particular, the introduction of R&D centers and various innovation projects].
National bank of ukraine’s official rates as of 18/07/19
Source: National Bank of Ukraine
