A group of lawmakers from the Verkhovna Rada have registered bill No. 9507 proposing that sale of plastic bags in stores and other retail outlets is banned. According to the explanatory note to the bill, it is proposed to prohibit the implementation of ultra-light and light plastic bags. Exceptions are biodegradable bags and ultralight bags for meat, fish, and bulk solids. In addition, the bill provides for mandatory labeling of plastic bags.
The bill aims at reducing the amount of safe waste from polyethylene.
According to the information on the website of the parliament, 60 MPs were the initiators of the bill, including Boryslav Bereza (member of no faction), Serhiy Kiral (Samopomich), Olena Sotnik (Samopomich), Mustafa Nayyem (Petro Poroshenko Bloc), Oleksiy Mushak (Petro Poroshenko Bloc) and others.
Westinghouse (the United States) is working on resumption of production processes required for fabrication of fuel for VVER-440 type reactors, Westinghouse President José Emeterio Gutiérrez has said in an interview with the Energoatom Ukrainy magazine.
“Currently, Westinghouse is resuming all production processes in this area of production and will be ready to supply fuel for the VVER-440 [reactors] after signing a commercial agreement with Energoatom,” he said.
The company president also said that Westinghouse had previously supplied fuel for reactors of this type at Finland’s Loviisa nuclear power plant (NPP).
“The updated design of this fuel, which will meet the needs of Ukrainian reactors at the Rivne NPP, has already been determined,” he said.
Regarding the supply of fuel assemblies produced by Westinghouse to reactor three of the Rivne NPP (VVER-1000 reactor), which currently consumes Russian-made fuel, Gutiérrez expressed the hope that the switch of the reactor to Westinghouse fuel, as planned, would be carried out in 2021.
Grain Alliance, a large agricultural producer in Ukraine, intends to increase its elevator capacity by 100,000 tonnes in the coming years, to 350,000 tonnes.
“In the coming years, we plan to add up to 100,000 tonnes to Grain Alliance’s capacities. But we will focus on the throughput capacity of the existing facilities. We plan to bring the average figure for the holding to 2.5 circulations at all elevator enterprises in the near future,” the company’s press service told Interfax-Ukraine.
The company clarified that in 2018 Grain Alliance increased its land bank by 3,000 hectares.
“Our company does not aim to build up the land bank at any cost. We understand well that land is not a goal, but the means of achieving a goal. Accordingly, we are not ready to overpay for land and infrastructure. However, the company is gradually raising its land bank, in particular, due to growth in villages where the holding is doing business,” the press service noted.
Grain Alliance cultivates more than 50,000 hectares of agricultural land in Kyiv, Cherkasy, Poltava, Khmelnytsky, and Chernihiv regions.
JKX Oil & Gas with assets in Ukraine and Russia in early 2019 reached the average daily production of 5,129 barrels (boepd), which is 27.8% more than the average figure for the fourth quarter of 2018, the company reported on the London Stock Exchange. According to the report, this result was achieved thanks to the successful testing of the IG103 wellbore, as a result of which the productivity of this well continues to exceed expectations and recently amounted to about 1,600 boepd, while the estimated production from it exceeds 30 million cubic meters.
In accordance with the presentation of JKX, last year it increased natural gas production by 4.6%, to 181 million cubic meters, oil extraction by 6.3%, to 34,000 tonnes.
The company said that in 2019 it intends to increase production in Ukraine thanks to new drilling and other measures, including research and 3D seismic exploration.
GAS, JKX, OIL, PRODUCTION
Sunvin 5 LLC and Solar Farm 8 LLC during 2019-2020 intend to build two solar plants with a total capacity of 140 MW in Kirovohrad region, Deputy Head of Oleksandriya District State Administration Yuriy Koval has said at a meeting of the District Development Council in late January. According to a posting on the website of the district state administration, in particular, Sunvin 5 LLC plans in 2019 to begin the construction of a 60 MW Morozivka solar plant in the area of 132 hectares under the jurisdiction of Novoselivske village council.
In addition, Solar Farm 8 LLC intends in 2020 to build a solar power station with a capacity of 80 MW in the area of 125 hectares (Bandurove village council).
Solar Farm 8, which is part of DTEK Renewables holding, also plans to build a 50 MW solar plant in the territory of Dykivka village council of Znamyanka district of Kirovohrad region. In the summer of 2018, it received a land plot of 24 hectares for rent for 49 years.
The UNIT.City innovation park (Kyiv) and Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF) have presented the detailed overview of the key elements of Ukrainian IT industry, according to which a total of 184,700 designers worked in 4,000 IT companies in Ukraine in 2018. According to the data of the App Annie research company, every fifth global company working in the field of software development for mobile platforms has an office in Ukraine, according to the overview.
According to the study of The State of European Tech 2018, Ukraine has almost 184,700 IT designers. According to the report, last year Ukrainian startups managed to attract more than $290 million of investments.
“Over the past five years, the growth pace of the Ukrainian IT industry is calculated in double digits. Every fifth Fortune 500 company uses Ukrainian IT services. Therefore, today is the best time to open or expand own innovative business here. This guide will help international partners know this to be true,” UNIT.City CEO and Managing Partner Max Yakover said.
According to the overview, the IT industry is second in Ukraine in terms of exports in 2018, while in the world Ukraine ranks 24th among the most attractive countries for software development, and in accordance with the Global Innovation Index Ukraine ranked 54th out of 126 states.
“It is necessary that international partners have as much information as possible and have access to breakthrough local startups and entrepreneurs. The technology sector is of strategic importance for the Ukrainian economy and can change how Ukraine is perceived in the world during the digital transformation,” WNISEF President and CEO Jaroslawa Z. Johnson said.
The review also indicates that there are more than 110 research and development and design centers of companies located in Ukraine. The largest R & D partner of Ukraine is the United States (45% of companies), followed by the EU and Israel. The areas of expertise of Ukrainian R & D centers cover games, e-commerce, work with BigData and artificial intelligence, telecommunications, the Internet of Things, software development and other areas.
More than half of the R & D centers are located in Kyiv, and the major research centers are also Dnipro, Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa and Vinnytsia.
As reported, the UNIT.City innovation park of businessman Vasyl Khmelnytsky officially opened in April 2017 on the territory of the former Kyiv Motorcycle Plant. On its territory there are co-working space Chasopys-UNIT, UNIT Factory IT school, three laboratories, a business campus, a foundation and five accelerators.
