Norwegian-based NBT in April 2018 bought Syvashenergoprom (Kherson region, operates a wind farm with a capacity of about 3 MW) and intends to build a wind power plant with an installed capacity of 250-330 MW in the adjacent territories, the company’s website said. “In April 2018 NBT acquired the Ukrainian company Syvashenergoprom, which serves a 3 MW wind farm and is developing another 250-330 MW wind power project … NBT also signed several contracts for the development of other projects in Ukrainian wind energy, continues to seek new opportunities for the development of this market,” the report says.
As reported, in 2006 Kherson Regional State Administration transferred the unfinished Syvash wind power plant to concession to Syvashenergoprom until 2055. In 2011 Syvashenergoprom signed a lease agreement for 12 hectares of land under the concession wind farm and 1,300 hectares for the construction of new wind and solar generating facilities. NBT currently owns a 49% stake in Linxi wind farm with a capacity of 100 MW and a 33% stake in Baicheng wind farm with a capacity of 49.5 MW in China.
JYSK Ukraine LLC (Kyiv), which develops the network of JYSK furniture and household goods stores of the JYSK Group (Denmark), plans to open about 12 stores in Ukraine every year. “We have opened five stores this financial year (September 1, 2017 through August 31, 2018) and are working on opening two more JYSK stores in Kharkiv in August. On average, we plan to open 12 stores annually. We need, conditionally 10 years In order to close the needs of the Ukrainian market. Starting in September, all JYSK stores will be opened in the 3.0 new format. All the working stores will be rebuilt within six years,” CEO of JYSK Ukraine Yevhen Ivanitsa told Interfax-Ukraine.
As he specified, in 2012 the parent company JYSK bought out all the franchise stores of the network in Ukraine and went through an independent development.
Ivanitsa says the company did not study how the Swedish retailer Ikea will influence the development of JYSK in Ukraine, but the experience of JYSK in other countries indicates that the European competitor’s entry into the market had no negative impact on sales dynamics.
China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd. (CHEC) on August 8, 2018, began dredging on the offshore maritime approach channel to Chornomorsk Port and in the operating area of the first boot basin of the Sukhy estuary. The dredging will allow large vessels with a draft of up to 14.5 meters, such as Capesize, deadweight up to 100,000 tonnes and containerships with a capacity of 8,000 TEU to the current and planned reconstruction of deep-sea quays, the press service of the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority (USPA) has said.
The dredging project was developed by the Infrastructure Ministry’s institute and ChornomorNIIIProject. It will deepen the approach channel from 14.5 m to 16 m and extend the approach channel from 1,400 m to 1,600 m. The width will remain the same – 150 m. Dredging of the water area of the first boot basic of the Sukhy estuary will increase the depth in its central part up to 15 m. The total amount of dredging of Chornomorsk Port will be about 2 million cubic meters, including more than 500,000 cubic meters in the approach channel and about 1.5 million cubic meters in the water area. It is planned that the work on the projects will take two to five months.
The cost of the work is UAH 404.1 million without VAT. Of this amount, UAH 87.1 million will be spent on dredging of the channel, and UAH 317 million on increasing the water area. To carry out dredging in Chornomorsk, CHEC mobilized a dredging fleet of 15 vessels. All of them have already arrived in the port water area. As previously reported, CHEC was selected to conduct dredging operations at the port of Chornomorsk as a result of open tenders in the electronic public procurement system ProZorro on March 13, 2018.
CHEC also conducts dredging in the port of Yuzhny. In May 2017, the Chinese company and USPA signed two contracts, one of which has already been completed three months ahead of schedule, and the second is 70% completed.
The volume of private money transfers to Ukraine in January-May 2018 increased by 30% compared to the corresponding period of 2017, to $4.5 billion, Head of the Council of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Bohdan Danylyshyn has said. “The volume of private money remittances to Ukraine grew to 8.4% of GDP in 2017 (according to the new NBU methodology). And it continues to grow rapidly this year (in January-May this figure was 30% higher than last year and reached $4. 5 billion),” he wrote on his Facebook page.
According to Danylyshyn, a new wave of labor migration from Ukraine is due to many factors, the most important of which are military aggression, a deep and long-term economic crisis, unemployment.
“The NBU inflation report for January 2018 said that the share of migrants in the population aged 15-70 is 8% … The scale of labor migration in Ukraine has become dangerously high for the future economic prosperity of the country,” he wrote. In his estimation, a strong external migration, including highly skilled workers, together with the population aging is a significant challenge for the state. “For example, the “brain drain,” in particular, means the loss of public resources invested in their education, the narrowing of industry, the deterioration of the business environment,” he said.
Ukraine as of August 8 had threshed 30.7 million tonnes of early grain and leguminous crops from 8.9 million hectares (91% of the forecast for these crops) with the yield being 34.3 centners per ha. According to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, farmers harvested 22.8 million tonnes of winter wheat from 6.1 million hectares (95% of the forecast) with the yield of 37.4 centners/ha, 285,000 tonnes of spring wheat from 87,000 hectares (44%) with a yield of 32.9 centners/ha, 3 million tonnes of winter barley from 865,000 hectares (99%) with the yield being 35 centners per ha, 3.4 million tonnes of spring barley from 1.3 million hectares (82%) with a yield of 25.5 centners/ha, and 737,000 tonnes of peas from 406,000 hectares (94%) with a yield of 18.1 centners/ha.
The country also harvested 278,000 tonnes of rye from 107,000 hectares (72%) with a yield of 26.1 centners/ha and 151,000 tonnes of oats from 68,000 hectares (34%) with a yield of 22.3 centners/ha.
In addition, farmers threshed 2.5 million tonnes of winter rapeseeds from 965,000 hectares (99%) with a yield of 26.2 centners per ha and 45,000 tonnes of spring rapeseeds from 22,000 hectares (34%) with the yield standing at 20.6 centners/ha.
