The World Bank has kept the forecast for Ukraine’s GDP growth in 2018 at 3.5%, Lead Economist and Program Leader covering Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine Faruk Khan said in Kyiv on Tuesday.
“Economic growth is projected at 3.5% in 2018 if pending reforms in anticorruption, land markets, state-owned banks, and privatization can be advanced in the next few months. This would provide an important signal to investors. If reforms are delayed, growth could drop below current levels in an uncertain macroeconomic environment as financing risks rapidly increase,” the World Bank said in a press release.
According to the World Bank’s economic update for Ukraine, the growth outlook has become more uncertain, but safeguarding macroeconomic stability and completing key pending reforms by July 2018 to bolster investor confidence can help boost growth in the next two years.
“The complex political environment ahead of the 2019 elections is affecting reform prospects, but a window of opportunity exists to complete key reforms by July 2018. Reforms in land markets, the financial sector, anticorruption, and privatization would not only address medium-term growth bottlenecks, but also provide an important immediate signal to strengthen investor confidence,” the World Bank said.
The World Bank’s experts said that addressing macroeconomic vulnerabilities and containing inflationary pressures to reduce cost of funds for the private sector is also important to strengthen investor confidence. Under such a scenario with continued improvements in investor confidence, economic growth could improve to 3.5% in 2018 and 4% in 2019, with fixed investment growing by about 15%.
Shareholders in private joint-stock company Mondelez Ukraine (earlier Kraft Foods Ukraine) decided to pay UAH 128.78 million in dividends for 2011.
According to a company report in the information disclosure system of the National Commission for Securities and the Stock Market, the decision was made on April 5.
The dividends will be paid from April 24 through October 5, 2018.
Mondelez Ukraine is part of Mondelez International group of companies, one of the world’s largest producers of chocolate goods, cookies, sweets, and chewing gum.
The company in Ukraine includes Trostianets confectionery factory (Sumy region) and Chips Lux LLC subsidiary company (Kyiv region).
Kraft Foods Entity Holdings B.V. operates as a subsidiary of Mondelez International.
Growth of goods flow between Ukraine and Belarus was 15-16% in January 2018, Ukrainian Ambassador to Belarus Ihor Kizim has said.
“Our good flow is growing. Now we would reach $4.5 billion and even more… in January 2018, we saw 15-16% growth,” he told Interfax-Ukraine in Kyi v on Tuesday.
Kizim said that in 2017, the figure was 18%.
“We see the upward trend in the past two years after a decline in 2014 and 2015,” the diplomat said, reminding that in 2012-2013 goods flow between Ukraine and Belarus was $8 billion.
Petro-Consulting LLC (Kyiv), which early this year received a permit from the State Service of Geology and Deposits of Ukraine to produce lithium ores in the Shevchenkivske field (Velyka Novosilka district of Donetsk region) with 14 million tonnes of deposits, plans to attract a majority foreign partner for developing the field and start production in 2021. “Preliminary feasibility study shows the need to invest more than $120 million in the creation of: industrial infrastructure (electricity, gas, water supply and sewage, road construction to the railway station and the road between the mine and the dressing plant), the construction of a mine at a depth of at least 500 meters and a dressing plant,” the director of the company Ihor Kolomiyets told Interfax-Ukraine.
According to him, for the implementation of the mine construction project, a feasibility study was ordered in one of the international consulting companies.
Kolomiyets said that currently negotiations are being conducted with international investors who have experience in mining of metal ores in mines, enrichment of lithium ores at lithium dressing plants and distribution of lithium concentrate.
“Petro-Consulting has signed a letter of intent with two international companies and is negotiating the signing of the respective contracts. Investors will be attracted on the terms of their participation in the capital, as well as assistance in attracting loans. It is also planned to conclude a long-term off-take agreement,” the company’s director said, adding that one of the companies already has a similar project.
Commenting on publications in the media about the alleged connection of Petro-Consulting with People’s Deputy Ihor Kononenko, Deputy Head of the National Security and Defense Council Oleh Hladkovsky, businessman Vasyl Khmelnytsky, the director of the company categorically denied this.
