Business news from Ukraine

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has approved the budget of the Social Insurance Fund for 2018 with a surplus of UAH 1 billion.
According to government resolution No. 70 of February 14, the budget of the Social Insurance Fund was approved with a revenue part of UAH 23 billion, while its expenditure part amounts to UAH 22 billion. In particular, the revenue part together with the balance of funds at the beginning of the year was UAH 22.884 billion.
The expenditure part includes material security and social services for UAH 11.8 billion, insurance payments of UAH 8.3 billion, insurance costs for medical and social assistance for UAH 600 million, prevention of insurance cases for UAH 22.6 million, expenses associated with the performance of the insurer’s duties for UAH 69.6 million, expenses for the development and functioning of the fund’s information and analytical systems for UAH 33 million, administrative and business expenses of UAH 1.2 billion.
The reserve of funds is UAH 284.9 million.
It is noted that the adopted budget will allow transferring the amount of monthly insurance payments to victims at work, modernizing (recalculating) such payments for the period of 2008-2011, providing financing for medical rehabilitation of insured persons.

The first Ukrainian contest of biomedical startups MBioS Challenge has been launched in Ukraine, the finalists of which will be able to present their works in London at the annual conference of the Ukrainian Medical Association of the UK (UMAUK).
Coordinator of the National Council for Innovation Development Alla Oliynyk said at a press conference on Wednesday said that the contest is not limited to any specific areas in the field of medical technologies. The organizers will consider startups at the level of finished products and at the level of prototypes and ideas.
At the same time, she said that special attention will be paid to projects following the world trends in the field of medical technologies.
“Particularly [projects] in the context of world trends in which medicine is moving are interesting: it is personalized medicine, point delivery of medicines and many other things. If we are talking about those technologies that can be applied in Ukraine, where we have many experts, of course, we are talking about blockchain technologies, artificial intelligence, the Internet of things, the recognition of images of augmented reality, the technologies on the basis of which the world today is building its understanding of medicine,” Oliynyk said.
In turn, Head of the organizing committee of iForum Oleksandr Olshansky said, commenting on the possibilities of using blockchain technology in medicine, that it provides the opportunity of storing any data on medical manipulations, cutting off the possibility of their modification.
“From the point of view of medicine, this, of course, is an important thing, since blockchain allows you to create non-qualified sources of data,” he said.

Public joint-stock company Ukrtelecom saw net profit of UAH 867 million in 2017, which is 44.3% more than in 2016, Ukrtelecom CEO Yuriy Kurmaz said at a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday.
He said that after the audit of the company conducted in 2017, the earlier published figure for net profit for 2016 was changed from UAH 244 million to UAH 601 million.
Kurmaz said that net revenue of the operator grew by 1.7% in a year, to UAH 6.654 billion.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) grew by 4.9%, to UAH 1.867 million, EBITDA margin – by 1.8 percentage points, to 28.1%.
Capital investment fell by 0.7%, to UAH 948 million.
Kurmaz said that the data is presented, taking into account the stop of operations on the occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Ukrtelecom is the largest fixed communications operator in Ukraine.

VEON Ltd. (Amsterdam), the global provider of communications and Internet services with more than 240 million customers, has authorized the incumbent president of Ukraine’s largest mobile operator Kyivstar, Peter Chernyshov, to manage the Eurasia business unit. “Chernyshov, being the head of the Eurasia business unit, will be responsible for the VEON business in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan, remaining the president of Kyivstar, one of the most successful operating companies in VEON Group,” the report reads.
VEON noted Chernyshov has a great international experience of work at high management posts. In particular, he had headed Carlsberg Ukraine for several years. Later he became vice president responsible for Carlsberg Group’s work in six countries of Eastern Europe. According to the group, this staff reshuffle was made within the framework of transformation of the corporate structure aimed at creating a balanced distribution of roles and tasks between the headquarters and operating companies.

Ukraine since the beginning of the 2017/2018 agricultural year (July-June) and as of February 14, 2018 had exported 25.123 million tonnes of grain.
According to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, the country exported about 12.6 million tonnes of wheat, some 4 million tonnes of barley and 8.5 million tonnes of corn.
In addition, 287,600 tonnes of flour had been exported as of February 14.
As reported, with reference to the ministry, Ukraine in the 2016/2017 agri-year exported 43.9 million tonnes of grain.
According to the ministry’s forecasts, grain exports from Ukraine in the 2017/2018 agri-year will amount to 41 million tonnes.