The volume of construction work decreased by 12.8% in Ukraine in March 2020 compared to March 2019, whereas in February 2020 by 3.8% compared to February 2019.
The State Statistics Service said that the volume of construction work has reached UAH 26.1 billion from the beginning of 2020. In general, that indicator decreased by 5.5% in the first quarter of 2020, compared to the same period in 2019.
The statistics service said that the indicator increased by 28.2% in March, compared to February (according to seasonally adjusted data, it decreased by 1.8%), while compared to January 2019, that indicator decreased by 2.7%.
The statistics service said in March 2020 that the volume of work decreased in all sectors of construction, except non-residential one in March 2019. Thus, according to unadjusted data, the reduction in volumes in residential construction amounted to 25%, in the construction of engineering structures by 12.4%. The growth in work in the construction of non-residential buildings amounted to 1%.
The share of new construction to the total volume of finished construction works amounted to 46.7%, repair amounted to 25.8%, reconstruction and technical re-equipment amounted to 27.5%.
Decrease in the volume of construction work was recorded in 13 regions, in particular in Kirovohrad (by 50.5%, to UAH 219.3 million), Odesa (by 27.8%, to UAH 1.51 billion) and Zhytomyr (by 20.2%, to UAH 267.6 million) in January-March 2020, compared with the same period in 2019.
The largest growth in construction work was recorded in Chernihiv (by 22.9%, to UAH 339.2 million), Lviv (by 15.4%, to UAH 2.03 billion) and Rivne (by 12%, to UAH 356.5 million) regions in the first quarter of 2020. In Kyiv, the volume of construction work performed during that period decreased by 8.3% and amounted to UAH 6.46 billion.
The statistical data are given excluding the occupied territory of Crimea and the temporarily occupied territories in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Nova Poshta Global, part of the Nova Poshta group of companies, notes a 28% increase in Ukrainians’ orders from AliExpress compared to April last year.
According to a press release, in January-March of this year Nova Poshta Global delivered over 1,000 tonnes of goods from China and the United States by air.
“AliExpress continues to be a favorite foreign online store among Ukrainians, on which not only the number of orders has grown, but also the average check of purchases. If it was $6.6 amid quarantine, now it has grown to $11.6, and the number of orders of protective equipment and medical goods, including masks, respirators, thermometers, etc., rose. But the most popular categories of goods remain phone cases, cables, chargers, clothes, shoes, underwear and dietary supplements,” Nova Poshta Global notes.
Regarding popularity among Ukrainians, AliExpress, according to the company, is followed by the American online stores iHerb, Ebay, Amazon and 6p.m.
According to Nova Poshta Global, the number of orders from customers from Zhytomyr region doubled during quarantine. However, the most active buyers from abroad remain residents of large cities, namely Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro, and Lviv.
Ukrainian Insurance Group (Kyiv) has paid UAH 126 million to PJSC Myronivsky Hliboproduct (MHP) for the Eurocopter EC145 helicopter that fell near Trukhaniv Island in Kyiv in September 2018, the insurer said on its website.
The payment was made under the compulsory insurance contract for civil aircraft, which covered the risks of complete loss and damage of the aircraft, including individual parts, systems and constructive parts, during taxing, in the air or on the ground (including parking).
The company said that specialists of Ukrainian Insurance Group, a representative of Myronivsky Hliboproduct and involved experts from United Loss Adjusters (the official representative of Sedgwick and Cunningham Lindsey in Ukraine) were directly involved in the settlement of the insured accident.
“The collaborative work of all parties in conducting numerous expert reviews and doing actions to assess the loss allowed Ukrainian Insurance Group to quickly settle this complex insured accident and pay insurance money. The total amount of insurance money received by MHP amounted to UAH 126 million,” the company said.
Ukrainian Insurance Group is a company with 100% foreign capital. It has been operating in the Ukrainian conventional insurance market since 2000, it is part of Vienna Insurance Group, the market leader in Central and Eastern Europe.
PJSC Myronivsky Hliboproduct (MHP) is one of the leaders of the Ukrainian agricultural industry.
The enterprises of Metinvest Group, the largest Ukrainian mining and metallurgical holding, according to the results of operational improvement measures implemented in January-March 2020 brought $53.8 million of economic effect, of which about $25 million fell to Mariupol-based Illich Iron and Steel Works and Azovstal Iron and Steel Works.
The Metinvest-Mariupol division said on its Facebook page on Monday, May 4, that the greatest result was made by Azovstal, which reduced electricity consumption in the thick-sheet workshop and significantly reduced the length of the sheet production by using a manual marker for machine sheet marking after hot plate leveller. In the lime-burning workshop, the amount of calcine limestone was increased by 2% at a similar gas flow rate due to a change in the torch type of the furnace burner. Due to the implementation of these and other measures, the metallurgical plant saved $17.6 million.
In turn, Illich Iron and Steel Works in the first quarter following the replacement of four furnace carriage coke feed in the blast-furnace workshop with the three furnace carriage coke feed reduced coke and electricity consumption. In the lime-burning workshop, an increase in the load weight of 60 kg per furnace carriage allowed to save natural gas, without reducing the productivity and quality characteristics of the products. Due to a qualitatively new interaction between the remote sections of combined heat and power plants (CHPP), which previously belonged to CHPP-1 and CHPP-2, the minimum emission of blast furnace gas to flare was achieved and additional electricity generation was obtained. The economic effect of operational improvements introduced at the plant amounted to $7.3 million in January-March 2020.
Metinvest Group is a vertically integrated group of steel and mining companies that manages every link of the value chain, from mining and processing iron ore and coal to making and selling semi-finished and finished steel products. It comprises steel and mining production facilities located in Ukraine, Europe and the United States, as well as a sales network covering all key global markets. Metinvest business is divided for financial reporting purposes into two segments: metallurgical and mining. The group ended the first quarter with revenues of $2.9 billion and an EBITDA margin was 15%.
Metinvest Holding LLC is the management company of Metinvest Group.
The project of the Dunaya resort in Odesa region provides for attracting private investments of $2.5 billion, replenishing the hotel rooms with 20,000 rooms and creating 25,000 jobs, Fazil Askerov, the chairman of the board of the Odesa region tourism association, has said.
“This is the Dunaya resort town. The state company Dunaya. A year-round resort with a gambling zone. It will be located on the spit (part of the spit is a dam) between Sasyk Lake and the Black Sea. More than 500 hectares, the embankment is over 10 km. More than 80 hotels, the smallest with 150 rooms, and the largest with 1,000 rooms,” he said on Facebook.
The project provides for the opening of the first hotels in 2022, Askerov said. According to the plan, the resort will receive the first million tourists in 2025, and by 2030 their number will reach 6 million annually.
“After the quarantine is over, we will definitely hold a public presentation of the project for the general public,” he wrote.
He added that the project was created on the initiative of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, the project’s architect was Serhiy Husev’s team, and one of the ideological authors was the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada’s Committee on Economic Development, Dmytro Natalukha. In addition, according to him, Mikheil Saakashvili presented the project at the parliamentary hearings in 2016.
Wizz Air, the Hungarian low cost airline, invested more than $100 million in a new base at Lviv International Airport, which it is planning to open on July 1, 2020, Wizz Air Chief Commercial Officer George Michalopoulos said.
“When we usually open More…
