The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) stops financing projects in the field of solar energy in Ukraine until a more rational method of supporting the development of renewable energy sources is introduced, senior banker of the EBRD’s energy department Olga Yeriomina has said at the Ukrainian Energy Week in Kyiv.
“Now this is the issue of several days when the bank may decide that in future it will not support new projects on renewable energy. We have already decided that we are not taking new projects on electricity, while we have not yet decided on wind energy,” she said.
The banker stressed that the bank is concerned about a lack of significant steps on the part of the parliament to move from the “feed-in” tariff to other, more rational systems of support for the development of renewable energy sources in the country, in particular, to “green” auctions.
“I am afraid that we will not be the last “swallow” to stop supporting projects on renewable energy, unless an immediate planned transition to a more sustainable support system for renewable energy projects begins,” she added.
According to her, the feed-in tariff has already played its role in stimulating the development of renewable energy in the country and is now a burden for the budget, from which the difference between the feed-in tariff and the tariff for energy production by traditional sources is reimbursed.
Reikartz Hotel Management LLC (Kyiv), the managing company of the Reikartz Hotel Group, has launched the Chinese friendly program intended for tourists and business travelers from China, the press service of the chain has reported.
“We analyzed the market and found that 25,200 tourists arrived in Ukraine from China in 2017, which means that during the year tourist flow increased by 40%,” Director of Corporate Culture at Reikartz Hotel Group Oleksiy Larionov said.
He said that the Chinese friendly program has already existed in different countries of the world, but it is unique in Ukraine at the moment.
Six Reikartz hotels have already become participants of the program, including Raziotel Kyiv Yamska, VitaPark Borysfen, Reikartz Zaporizhia, Raziotel Marenero Odesa, Reikartz Dworzec Lviv and Reikartz River Mykolaiv: voice translation, navigation in hotels and information in the rooms translated into Chinese, and for breakfast you can choose Chinese dishes and use traditional chopsticks.
The company said that the program will be distributed to all hotels of the chain by the end of 2019.
Ireland’s low-cost airline Ryanair plans to invest $1.5 billion in Ukraine in three or five years, expanding its fleet to 15 planes and passenger traffic to 5 million people, Ryanair Chief Commercial Officer David O’Brien said at a meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kyiv on Tuesday.
The airline has hopes that the planes will be placed on the territory of Ukraine and that it will fly from Ukraine as from own base of operations, he said.
O’Brien also said that now the main problem related to the increase in the number of flights of the airline to Ukraine is the protective policy of the European Union (EU) from Germany, France, Italy and Belgium. He said that as soon as this obstacle is overcome, the airline will increase the number of flights from/to Ukraine.
He also said that Ryanair plans to increase the number of flight from Kyiv and boost passenger flow by summer 2019.
As reported, referring to the Infrastructure Ministry of Ukraine, Ryanair is studying a possibility of creating a servicing center at the Boryspil airport (Kyiv).
Ryanair offers flights from Kyiv to six cities in Poland, one destination in Germany, Spain, Lithuania, Slovakia, the UK and Sweden, as well as two destinations from Lviv to Germany and Poland, one to the U.K.
Retail trade turnover in Ukraine in January-October 2018 in comparable prices increased by 5.4% compared with January-October 2017, the State Statistics Service has reported. Retail trade turnover in October 2018 rose by 2% compared with September of the current year, and by 5% from October 2017.
The largest growth in retail trade turnover for the ten months of 2018 compared to the same period in 2017 was observed in Luhansk (by 27%), Donetsk (by 12.9%), Zakarpattia (by 11.5%), and Poltava regions (11.4%).
The Irish low cost air carrier Ryanair could start operating flights from Italy to Ukraine as early as 2019, chief commercial officer of the company David O’Brien has said at a conference at the Ministry of Infrastructure. “In Italy, we fly from Milan and Pisa. But the Italian government provided certain advantages to the airline, which has only two flights. We filed a lawsuit and won the case, so maybe we will also fly from Italy to Ukraine,” he said.
Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan, in turn, noted that Ukraine plans to provide all the necessary support for the launch of flights by the Irish low cost airline on the direction Ukraine-Italy. “I believe that Ryanair will be able to fly from Italy next year,” the minister said.
He also said that the Ministry of Infrastructure had sent a corresponding letter to the Italian government, moreover, negotiations with the Italian Transport Minister were scheduled for the near future, during which Omelyan plans to raise the issue of planning flights in the Ukrainian direction.
Omelyan also noted that he expects the final settlement of Open Skies Agreement issues with the European Union in the first half of 2019.
The Snapchat social network has placed its office and the R&D division in the UNIT.City innovative park in Kyiv, Managing Partner and CEO of UNIT.City Maksym Yakover has written on his Facebook page. “Snapchat has become a resident of UNIT.City. Almost a year of work for a large team to make it happen. We have an office and an R&D division, which, by the way, is actively expanding now,” he said.
Yakover said that Snapchat is one of the most innovative companies in the world.
Snapchat is a mobile photo messaging and multimedia sharing application which capitalization is $8 billion and which has 186 million active users a day. The application was released in September 2011 by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown.
In 2015, Snapchat bought a Ukrainian startup (Odesa) for $150 million.
As reported, businessman Vasyl Khmelnytsky intends to expand the area of the UNIT.City innovative park in Kyiv from 19 hectares to 26 hectares.
The managing partners of UNIT.City are Maksym Bakhmatov and Maksym Yakover (the CEO of the park).
Yakover is also a co-owner of the Chasopys creative co-working space at 3 Lva Tolstoho Street in Kyiv.
