Enterprises comprising Ukraine’s rocket and space industry boosted production by 12.7% in the first six months of 2018 compared to the same period last year, to UAH 1.58 billion.
Sales of the enterprises in the first six months of 2018 increased by 12.3%, to UAH 1.57 billion, while the total volume of gross output amounted to UAH 2.11 billion, the press service of the State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU) has said.
The agency said exports to the EU, United States and other countries amounted to UAH 877.4 million, or 90.1% of all exports.
During the period, five Ukrainian space enterprises posted profits: open join-stock company Kharton had UAH 2.99 million in net profit, state-owned Yuzhny machine-building plant named after Oleksandr Makarov (Yuzhmash, or Pivdenmash) reported about UAH 130,000 in net profit, while the net profit of production association Kyivprylad was UAH 20,000. State-owned Scientific and Research Technological Institute of Instrument Making and state-run Ukrkosmos were also in the black, the press service said.
The average number of full-time employees of the industry as of the end of the second quarter of 2018 (July 1, 2018) was 16,745 people, 0.3% less than in the first quarter.
“The main reason for the reduction in the number of staff remains relatively low wages due to the underloaded capacity of enterprises and the transfer of some of them for a shorter workweek, or other forms of optimization of labor costs,” the report says. The nominal average monthly salary in the industry grew by 8.1% compared to the beginning of the year and amounted to UAH 8,223.1 in the first half of the year, the SSAU said.
As reported, at the present time there are 26 enterprises and organizations of the rocket and space industry in the management of the SSAU.
In 2018, the state budget for the rocket and space industry envisages UAH 2.03 billion in the state budget, which is 30% less than in 2017. Of the total financing of the sector through the general fund, some UAH 1.55 billion (79%) should be spent on servicing of debt obligations on earlier borrowed loans for the implementation of international projects, in particular, for servicing a loan raised under the project “Creation of the National Satellite Communication System.” In 2017, some 61.5% of the industry budget (UAH 1.5 billion) was allocated from the national budget for these purposes.
For the first time over the years, there is no provision for financing a national targeted research and engineering space program in the 2018 state budget.
Also, the country’s budget for 2018 envisaged no funding for defense state programs and projects implemented by space industry enterprises under the SSAU. The budget of the industry in 2017 allocated UAH 941.2 million (32.3% of the total sum) under such programs.
Exports of Ukrainian agrarian products in January-June 2018 amounted to $8.6 billion compared to $8.7 billion in the same period last year.
According to a press release of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, for the first half of the year the leaders of Ukrainian agrarian exports were grain crops with a share of 36.8%, vegetable oils with 26.2%, and oilseeds with 7.5%.
“Over the six months of this year, the following commodity groups showed the highest growth rates of exports: poultry eggs by 2.1 times (by $27.7 million), apples, pears and quince by 5.3 times ($6.7 million), legume vegetables by 58.3 times (by $11 million), butter and other fats made from milk by 65.2% ($29.2 million) and others,” Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food on the issues of European integration Olha Trofimtseva said.
According to her, the regional structure of Ukrainian agrarian exports has not changed: Asia countries rank first with a share of 43.2%, the European Union ranks second with 30.4%, and Africa ranks third with 14.6%.
“The top five of our largest customers in 2018 are headed by India, where agricultural and food products were exported for more than $1 billion. Egypt followed with $575.9 million, China with $526.6 million, the Netherlands with $525.3 million, Spain with $470.3 million,” the deputy minister noted.
Ukraine ranks fifth in the world in terms of honey production and is the leader in its production in Europe, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze’s office has said.
“Our country produces more than 100,000 tonnes per year, that is 6% of the world’s honey [output]. Today there are about 400,000 beekeepers with 4 million beehives in Ukraine,” it said on Facebook.
The office notes that the main producers of honey are eight regions: Vinnytsia, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv, Poltava, and Kirovohrad, which account for 70% of Ukrainian honey supplied to 35 countries.
“Most of the produce is exported by Ukraine to the United States, Germany, Poland, and France. In 2017, over 50,000 tonnes of honey was delivered to the EU countries alone (this includes over 5,000 tonnes within a duty-free quota),” the report said.
Ukraine’s customs in January-July 2018 opened seven cases for violating customs rules on importing and exporting goods included in the customs register of intellectual property rights for UAH 1.4 million, Ukraine’s State Fiscal Service (SFS) said on Monday. Since the start of the year, customs officials have 4,200 times halted customs clearance because of possible violations of intellectual property rights, the SFS said. “In general, the situation as of August 1, 2018, is as follows: the legal owners of intellectual property rights entered 3,818 items into the customs registry. Of them, 206 have been entered since the start of 2018.
The registry lists items of ownership of intellectual property and associated rights, inventions, useful models, industrial samples, trademarks, geographical designators (indices of origin of goods) and plant varieties, the service said.
One case was brought against a Ukrainian entity that tried to import from China 4,400 pairs of sneakers with markings similar to the ADIDAS, NIKE, PUMA logos. The court confirmed that the goods were imported in violation of intellectual property rights. Goods worth more than UAH 1 million were confiscated seized and a UAH 17,000 fine was imposed.
“In a second case, a Ukrainian private enterprise attempted to import 417 headphones from China with unauthorized use of the image and the APPLE logo, which is included in the register of objects of intellectual property rights,” the agency said.
Under a court decision, goods worth UAH 104,200 were confiscated and the court also imposed a UAH 17,000 fine on the offender, the SFS said.
Mriya Agro Holding has launched its first crop protection chemical mix station in Khorostkiv, Ternopil region, to the tune of UAH 1.8 million. “We’ve launched a station to mix crop protection products in Khorostkiv to reduce the use of chemicals to a minimum and increase the speed of their application. The payback of the station in keeping with our estimates will be 12 months. Initially, the cost of the station was estimated at UAH 2.5 million, but we managed to reduce to UAH 1.8 million thanks to its re-equipment and refinement. We plan to launch 15 more such stations at all clusters of the agricultural holding,” head of Mriya Agro Holding’s agronomic department Oleksandr Khmeliuk said at a press conference.
According to him, the holding plans to approve a strategy in November 2018 for the construction of mix stations with a model design of the station, which will be used by all clusters of Mriya.
“Then it will be possible to evaluate the needed investments and the timing of the construction of stations for mixing crop protection products,” Khmeliuk said.
Mriya Agro Holding is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding founded in 1992 by Ivan Huta. Today, its land bank is 165,000 hectares. The capacity of its silos and grain storages is estimated at 380,000 tonnes.
