Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said that Ukraine’s exports to Canada grew by 76%, and imports from Canada by 93% in 2017.
“This year alone our exports to Canada grew by 76%, and imports from Canada by 93%, almost two-fold from last year,” he said at a joint press conference with Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland in Kyiv on Thursday.
Klimkin noted large potential of growth of mutual trade between the countries.
According to him, the agreement on a free trade area between the countries can be expanded to cover services and investments.
AVentures Capital, investing in innovative companies at initial phases, in the past 18 months (as of mid-December 2017) invested over $3.5 million in seven Ukrainian companies.
Managing partner of AVentures Andriy Kolodiuk told reporters on Thursday that average receipt of the fund starts from $500,000, and investment in companies during their expansion – up to $1.5 million.
Kolodiuk said that in 12 months the fund invested $500,000 each in Spinbackup and Bookimed (initial investment), around $500,000 in Teamfusion, invested its part in Petcube, the total volume of the round was $10 million (additional financing).
“Three more deals for $500,000-$1.5 million remain secret, including with two companies at the growth phase with over 100 employees. These are conditions of our contrast with them regarding confidentiality of some information,” Kolodiuk said.
He said that in most projects the fund was a first investor. The fund also helped actively attract financing from other investment funds (in particular, for Petcube AVentures helped to raise $8 million in 2017).
Kolodiuk said that the fund plans to close two or three more new deals in 2018 (in H1 2018), and active negotiations are being held with a dozen companies.
YURiA-PHARM pharmaceutical company is mulling the possibility of supplying antitubercular agents to Brazil, Director General of YURiA-PHARM LLC Dmytro Derkach has said.
Currently the company is waiting for the results of the inspection of its production sites conducted by the National Agency for Sanitary Supervision of Brazil (Agencia Nacional deVigilancia Sanitaria, ANVISA), he said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine.
“Today Brazil is interested in products made by YURiA-PHARM, in particular these are antitubercular agents,” Derkach said.
The company seeks to continue work on the introduction of new medicine production and the implementation of the strategy to enter international markets in 2018.
“Today, our products are present in over 25 countries. Our work is being done in 50 countries,” he said.
According to Business Credit company, in January-November 2017, YURiA-PHARM was in the top three leaders in pharmacy sales in kind and it is a dynamic leader in the high price cluster.
YURiA-PHARM is a member of the Association of Manufacturers of Medications of Ukraine.
State-owned enterprise Energoatom, U.S.-based Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and U.S.-based Central Storage Safety Project Trust (CSSPT) have signed an agreement on a $250 million loan for the construction of a centralized spent nuclear fuel storage facility.
OPIC will insure political risks (BOC coverage) on the funds to be borrowed by Energoatom, while the Ukrainian government guarantees the fulfillment of the Ukrainian enterprise’s debt obligations on the 20-year amortization loan.
The funds will be used to supply containers for storage and transportation of spent nuclear fuel and other equipment, which will be provided by U.S.-based Holtec International.
“Ukraine will not spend about $200 million annually on removal of spent nuclear fuel to the Russian Federation, and it will safely store valuable nuclear materials locally until their processing becomes feasible and energy efficient as much as possible,” the ministry said.
As earlier reported, Energoatom in January 2015 signed an agreement with Holtec International on the development and introduction of spent nuclear fuel technologies worth almost $300 million.
Premier Hotels and Resorts (Kyiv) plans to finish construction a five-star apartment hotel near the Bukovel tourist complex (Ivano-Frankivsk region) by early 2019.
The company told Interfax-Ukraine that the apartment hotel will be opened under the Premier Resort Hotel brand. It would have 130 rooms with an area starting from 25 square meters.
The construction of the hotel was started in April 2017. The area of a land parcel is 0.25 ha and the gross area of the hotel is 7,054 square meters.
LevDevelopment (Lviv) is the developer and constructor of the project, while investors are individuals. Premier Hotels and Resorts will manage the hotel.
According to the company’s information, as of December 18, 2017, 30% of apartments have been sold. The cost of one square meter starts from $2,300 (taking into account decorations, furniture and household appliances).
Premier Hotels and Resorts (Premier International LLC, Kyiv) is composed of 17 hotels under the Premier Palace Hotels, Premier Hotels and Premier Compass Hotels brands. The hotels are located in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Lviv, Odesa, Poltava, Sumy, Kherson, Donetsk, Pochayiv, Mukachevo (Zakarpattia region), Oleksandria (Kirovohrad region) and Starovoitove (Volyn region).
According to the unified register of companies and individual businessmen, as of December 18, 2017, the founder and head of the company is Iryna Sidletska.
Metinvest B.V. (the Netherlands), the parent company of the Metinvest mining and metal group, increased consolidated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) by 39% in January-September 2017 year-over-year, to $1.373 billion.
According to a trading update published by the company, its revenue grew by 36%, to $6.222 billion, capital investment – by 55%, to $308 million and margin did not change, being 22%.
Metinvest said that since early 2017 the company managed to reduce total debt by 2%, to $2.909 billion, boosting cash and cash equivalents by 30%, to $293 million.
Metinvest Group’s principal shareholders are System Capital Management with 71.24% and Smart-Holding with 23.76%.
