The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) plans in 2019 to increase the volume of investment in the Ukrainian economy to $1 billion, head of the Ukrainian office of the EBRD Marina Petrov has stated.
“The $500 million that we invested last year was not bad at all. This year we sincerely hope to increase it twice [investment in Ukraine],” she said at a meeting at the European Business Association (EBA), dedicated to the expectations of businesses from the presidential election.
However, she noted the importance of consistency and predictability of the future economic policy.
“We hope that there will be no reversal,” she said.
“The ongoing changes [political] carry both risks and opportunities. We hope very much for a balanced economic policy that will allow accelerating the growth that has already begun in the Ukrainian economy,” she told Interfax-Ukraine.
The banker stressed the need to continue cooperation with the IMF.
“We hope that, first of all, the work on the IMF program will continue. We already see investors ready to come to the economy [in Ukraine]. The most important thing is not to frighten investors, not to make unexpected economic decisions,” the expert said.
Kyivstar, the leading Ukrainian mobile operator, has announced the demonstration of a base station for 5G networks and equipment testing, which allows increasing the capacity of one LTE cell by 6.5 times.
“After the certification and registration of new equipment in Ukraine is completed, the company will implement it in places with high concentration of mobile traffic, for example, stadiums, concert venues, and places of public events,” the report says.
According to the report, the base station is equipped with the new Massive MIMO technology (a multipath active antenna system), a key technology for 5G communications networks. The station is installed for testing in the Kyivstar network in the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (KPI).
The company explained that this base station uses a built-in antenna with 32 transceivers, which operate simultaneously, which allows generating multiple digital streams and multiplying the capacity of the base station.
Kyivstar noted that in March 2019 its subscribers used more mobile Internet (45 Petabytes) than in the whole of 2016, and in the period from 2015 to 2018 the volume of data traffic in the Kyivstar network increased by 1,500%
PJSC Ukrtelecom in January-March 2019 increased EBITDA by 11% compared to the same period in 2018, to UAH 427 million, director general of the operator Yuriy Kurmaz has said at a press conference in Kyiv.
According to him, EBITDA margin for this period increased by 2 percentage points, to 26%.
Net income for the reporting period rose by 3%, to UAH 1.665 billion.
Kurmaz added that income from telecommunication services in the first quarter of the current year decreased by 1.4% compared to the first quarter of 2018, to UAH 1.416 billion.
In January-March, the operator provided services to private subscribers for more than UAH 922 million, business users for UAH 348 million.
At the same time, Kurmaz refused to voice the net financial result for the first quarter.
“I think it is inappropriate to talk about net profit for the first quarter, given the fact that from January 1 of this year a number of financial reporting standards have changed significantly, significantly influencing net profit. At the same time, I’d like to note that in the first quarter we achieved substantial profit,” he said.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) will reduce the refinancing rate to 17.5% from 18% from April 26, 2019, NBU Governor Yakiv Smolii has said at a briefing.
“The board of the National Bank decided to lower the refinancing rate to 17.5% per annum from April 26. Currently, a steady downward trend in inflation towards the 5% target allows the National Bank to begin the cycle of reducing the refinancing rate,” he said.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius, who arrived in Kyiv on a visit, met with President-elect of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky. “Held very good meeting with Ukraine’s President-elect V. Zelensky in Kyiv: congratulated on his land sliding victory in Presidential elections, reaffirmed Lithuania’s continuous steadfast support to Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, reforms, European & Euro-Atlantic integration,” he wrote on Twitter. He also published a joint photo with Zelensky in the social network.
As reported, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania Linas Linkevicius is on a working visit to Ukraine on April 25-26. The purpose of his visit to Kyiv is to deepen bilateral cooperation in the framework of the Ukrainian-Lithuanian strategic partnership.
The American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine is concerned about the introduction of the PSA (product sharing agreements) mechanism in addition to the license/royalty regime which continues to run in parallel.
The Chamber said that the criteria discriminating PSA and other blocks are unclear. The current PSA process is seriously flawed.
“PSAs are not used in any EU country, and their use in Ukraine only underlines the urgent need for reforms in the existing oil and gas fiscal and regulatory regime,” the Chamber said, adding that a single, fair, stable and non-discriminatory environment for oil and gas is one of the key factors in attracting major international investment.
The American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine looks forward to working with the government and members of the international community to offer ways to address shortcomings in the current PSA process and to create an environment that sparks a resurgence of interest in the sector and allows Ukraine to achieve its objectives including self-sufficiency in gas.
