Ukraine can increase the supply of cherries to the markets of the EU and Asia in 2018 and expand the geography of exports of melons, the fruit and vegetable market analyst, Tetiana Hetman, has said.
“There will be attempts to enter the EU (Poland, the Baltic states) market with strawberries in May and autumn 2018. It is expected that exports of cherries to the EU and Asia will increase, as well as melons supplies would be expanded to new directions. For example, Kherson watermelons can go to the UK. The attempts were made in 2017,” she was quoted on the website of the Ukraine Horticulture Business Development Project (UHBDP).
According to the expert’s forecasts, this year exports of frozen raspberries will increase.
“Family farms bought poor quality planting material, and low-quality berries will be supplied to the market, low-grade raw material prices will be at or below cost, while Poles in the border zone are now building a lot of bases and they will demand quality raw materials, so the price will be kept for high-quality raw materials,” Hetman said.
State-owned enterprise Ukrenergo saw a 42% fall in net profit in 2017 (by UAH 1.264 billion) compared with 2016, to UAH 1.748 billion.
According to a company financial report, net revenue last year rose by 15.2% or UAH 1.09 billion, to UAH 8.264 billion, and gross profit grew by 17% or UAH 849.257 million, to UAH 5.838 billion.
As reported, national energy company Ukrenergo in 2017 increased transmission of electricity through the backbone power grids by 2.4% (by 2.616 billion kWh) compared to 2016, to 113.837 billion kWh. The cost of electricity transmission services rose by 13.7% in 2017 (by UAH 965.217 million), to UAH 8.022 billion.
Ukrenergo operates trunk and interstate power grids, as well as performs the centralized dispatching of the united energy system in the country. The company is a state-owned enterprise, it is subordinate to the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry, but by the end of 2018 the company is to be reorganized into a private joint-stock company.
Private joint-stock company Ingosstrakh (Dnipro) saw UAH 378.2 million of net profit in 2017 (some 5-fold rise year-over-year).
According to a financial report of the company posted in the information disclosure system of the National Commission for Securities and the Stock Market, last year Ingosstrakh collected net insurance premiums worth UAH 737.856 million, which is 41.5% less than a year ago. Some UAH 77.42 million was sent to reinsurance, which is 2.4 times more than a year ago and UAH 193.5 million of payments in claims were made (82.2% down).
Administrative costs were UAH 22 million, while a year ago they stood at UAH 6 million.
Ingosstrakh was registered in 2004. Its core business is provision of risk insurance services.
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and President of the Arab Republic of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi have discussed issues of trade and economic cooperation during a telephone conversation. “The president of Egypt noted the friendly relations between the peoples of the two countries and stressed the Egyptian side’s readiness to expand trade and economic cooperation with our state. It was about the implementation of specific bilateral economic projects,” the presidential administration’s press service reported.
Poroshenko congratulated Abdel Fattah el-Sisi with a convincing victory in the presidential elections held in March 2018.
The Ukrainian president also noted the need to intensify the bilateral dialogue at all levels.
“The prospects for holding the next meeting of the Intergovernmental Joint Commission on Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation between Ukraine and Egypt were separately discussed,” the message reads.
Poroshenko invited el-Sisi to visit Ukraine.
National Nuclear Generating Company Energoatom expects the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine soon to approve documents for a tender to attract a partner in the project on the creation of the Ukraine-EU Energy Bridge, Energoatom’s press service has reported, referring to the company’s president, Yuriy Nedashkovsky. “We expect in the near future the approval by the Cabinet of Ministers of the tender documentation, which is needed to hold a tender to determine a private partner for the Ukraine-EU Energy Bridge project. One of the points of the documentation is the procedure for allowing Energoatom to access the interstate electricity market for 20 years, which will ensure unhindered exports of electricity,” the press service quoted Nedashkovsky as saying after a meeting with co-owner of Kulczyk Investments Dominika Kulczyk.
Kulczyk, in turn, assured Energoatom’s leadership that the energy bridge project is a priority for Kulczyk Investments.
Earlier reports, referring to the Ukrainian Energy and Coal Industry Ministry, said that Westinghouse Electric Sweden AB, Polenergia International S.àr.l. and EDF Trading Limited, a consortium of companies, planned to participate in the project to establish the Ukraine-EU Energy Bridge.
The Ukraine-EU Energy Bridge project envisages the organization of transmission from reactor two of Khmelnytsky NPP to the European power grid. The funds that will be received from exports of this electricity will be used to finance construction of reactors three and four of the NPP. The decision to implement a pilot project entitled “Ukraine-EU Energy Bridge” was made by the government in June 2015.
DOCUMENTS, ENERGOATOM, ENERGY BRIDGE PROJECT, TENDER UKRAINE-EU
There are no economic prerequisites or political grounds for the resignation of the current Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, and this is unacceptable one year before the presidential election, People’s Front Party leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk has said. “There will be no resignations of the Cabinet of Ministers. There are no economic prerequisites or political grounds for that. The issue of a report by the Cabinet of Ministers is raised exclusively for political motives, as it was raised when there was a political struggle against my Cabinet of Ministers,” Yatsenyuk told reporters on the sidelines of the 11th Kyiv Security Forum on Friday.
The politician noted that the People’s Front faction has no questions to the government as a whole or to its members delegated to the Cabinet of Ministers from this political party. According to him, People’s Front representatives in the government are coping with their duties, and if partners from the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko party consider it necessary to change some ministers, then this is their right, and there is a respective procedure for this.
Yatsenyuk stressed that the resignation of the government was unacceptable one year before the presidential elections. “There must be stability in the country, so that a fair, transparent presidential election is held, so that the course of reforms continues in the country, and so that there are no signs of political destabilization,” he added.
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, RESIGNATION, UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT, UNACCEPTABLE
