The co-founders of retail mobile bank Monobank Dmytro Dubilet, Oleg Gorohovsky and Mykhailo Rogalskiy plans to bring a bank, similar to Monobank, to the U.K. market by the end of the summer of 2019, Dubilet has said in an interview with the Novoye Vremia.Business ezine.
“We are trying to launch a project in England now. It can be called to some extent an analog of Monobank, but there we do it ourselves, without a partner bank. It will be named Koto. Now the key stage of launching a project is obtaining a financial license to be able to run this business independently,” Dubilet said.
According to him, about $1 million has already been spent on the implementation of this project, the project founders plan to invest approximately the same amount additionally.
Dubilet also said that the project is currently at the testing stage. “Now the alpha version is ready, we are engaged in internal testing. I, for example, am already paying for purchases with a Koto card,” he said.
Former top managers of PrivatBank, Gorohovsky, Dmytro Dubilet and Mykhailo Rogalskiy in January 2017 announced their plans to create an IT company, Fintech Band, for the Monobank project. By October 2017, Monobank issued the first thousand credit cards, it began raising deposits in hryvnias in February 2018.
Currently, the Monobank app has two partner banks: Universal Bank (included in the TAS group) and iBox (both are located in Kyiv). The total number of Monobank’s customers is 826,000.
Areas with sugar beets in Ukraine as of March 26, 2019 reached 20,000 ha, or 10% of the projections, the press service of the Ukrtsukor national association of sugar producers has reported.
According to the association, 11,000 ha were sowed with beets in Khmelnytsky region, 3,500 ha in Rivne, 2,700 ha in Volyn and 2,400 ha in Ternopil regions.
The association said that early sowing on 10% of the areas is thanks to the low soil moisture after winter, most beet growers plan to start sowing in the first decade of April.
As reported, Ukrtsukor predicts a reduction in the areas with sugar beet by 20%, to 220,000-230,000 hectares due to low prices in the past two years against the backdrop of a global sugar surplus. Sugar production in the 2019/2020 agricultural year (September-August) is projected at 1.5-1.6 million tonnes (in 2018/2019 agri-year 1.82 million tonnes).
Ukraine in the first half of 2018/2019 agri-year exported 274,400 tonnes of sugar, which is 6% less than in the previous season.
Showman Volodymyr Zelensky continues to lead among presidential candidates, followed by incumbent President Petro Poroshenko and Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko. These are the results of a survey by the Sociological Group Rating conducted from March 22 to March 27.
According to the results of the poll released on Thursday, Zelensky leads with 20.6% support, followed by Tymoshenko with 13% and Poroshenko with 12.9%.
Among respondents who have decided on their preferred candidate and intend to vote, Zelensky leads with 26.6%, followed by Poroshenko and Tymoshenko, with 17% each.
The survey was conducted from March 22 to March 27, 2019. Some 3,000 Ukrainian citizens 18 and older participated in the survey in a face-to-face interview. The margin of error is not more than 1.8%.
Argo-Trade Network LLC (ARGO, Kyiv) has rented about 800 square meters for six fashionable mono-brand stores, including Scotch & Soda, Liu Jo, Lee Cooper, Penti, OVS Kids and Parfois, in the River Mall shopping and entertainment center being under construction in Darnytsky district of the capital.
The press service of River Mall told Interfax-Ukraine the Scotch & Soda store will occupy 180 square meters, Liu Jo 162 square meters, Lee Cooper 105 square meters, Penti some 74 square meters, OVS Kids 180 square meters, and Parfois 96 square meters.
All stores of these brands will be presented in Darnytsky district for the first time.
“The River Mall shopping and entertainment center is the first high-class shopping center in Darnytsky district in Kyiv, which makes popular European brands of the ARGO group accessible to the residents of this district,” representatives of the distribution network noted.
As reported, ARGO brought the Italian premium brand Liu Jo and the Dutch brand Scotch & Soda to the Ukrainian market in 2018. The stores of these brands in the River Mall shopping mall will be the third in each of the network.
ARGO RETAILER, EUROPEAN BRANDS, RIVER MALL, STORES, TRADE CENTER
Municipal enterprise Voda Donbasu has announced a tender to supply 356 million kWh of electricity with the approximate cost of UAH 954 million (UAH 2.70 per kWh with VAT on average).
The announcement was made in the ProZorro e-procurement system on March 26. The auction is scheduled for May 31.
At the end of March, the permitted period, allowing Voda Donbasu to receive electricity from the supplier of last resort (state-owned enterprise Ukrinterenergo), to which it can be paid ex post, will expire.
Debt of Voda Donbasu for electricity at the end of 2018, according to the National Commission for Energy, Housing and Utilities Services Regulation (NCER), amounted to UAH 2.438 billion, and from the beginning of the year it increased by UAH 181 million.
