U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) has repeatedly approved the provision of $6.407 million loan with twelve-year tenor to Ukrainian Catholic University of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Lviv. According to a report of OPIC, the funds will be used for construction of a multi-purpose academic building and a residential building to expand the university campus.
The total cost of the project is $13 million. The U.S. sponsor is Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation Inc., a not for profit corporation organized in Illinois.
According to the materials, with the expansion of academic and residential buildings, the university expects enrollment to increase by 50% in the coming years, while the school also expects to nearly double the number of need-based scholarships it offers for local students.
As reported, last year OPIC approved the similar project. Then the loan was $6.2 million with the total cost of the project of $12 million.
Ukrainian Catholic University was built in 2002.
After three years of lucrative work, Astarta agricultural and industrial holding saw EUR 21.11 million in net loss in 2018 due to worsening of financial indicators and poor conditions on both sugar and grain markets. According to the company’s yearly report posted in the website of the Warsaw Stock Exchange on April 8, last year its earnings reduced by 18.8%, to EUR 372.22 million, EBITDA dropped by 52.4%, to EUR 56.87 million, and export declined by 3 percentage points, to 56%.
In addition, Astarta’s net debt increased by 2.3 times, to EUR 295.45 million, in 2018.
“We are well prepared for 2019 and showing cautious optimism. The company has revised its investment program, adjusted its sales policy and improved its credit portfolio and spending patterns,” founder and Director General of Astarta Viktor Ivanchyk said in the report.
The company earned EUR 119 million in the sugar segment (32% from consolidated revenue) in 2018. Its sales are estimated at 325,000 tonnes (27% less than in 2017) while its prices dropped by 23%. The company explained drop in sales by weak pricing environment and increased costs value of products due to poor quality of the beet harvest in 2018. Export accounted for 40% from sales in 2018.
According to the report, Astarta estimated its share in sugar production of Ukraine at 21%.
The company earned EUR 127 million in the crop production segment (34% from consolidated revenue). Astarta constructed three grain elevators with a total capacity of 230,000 tonnes in 2018.
Astarta earned EUR 74 million in the soybean processing segment (20% from consolidated revenue), which is 2% more than in 2017. The company produced 42,000 tonnes of soybean oil and 141,000 tonnes of oil cake.
The company’s revenue in dairy farming dropped by 8%, to EUR 29 million, in 2018.
Astarta is a vertically integrated agribusiness holding operating in Poltava, Vinnytsia, Khmelnytsky, Ternopil, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, and Kharkiv regions. The holding includes eight sugar factories, agricultural enterprises with a land bank of about 250,000 hectares and dairy farms.
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Germany’s Robotron Datenbank-Software GmbH and a consortium of developers consisting of Siemens AG (Austria), Siemens Ukraine, Siemens AS (Germany), Omnetric GmbH (Norway) and IP Systems Informatikai Zartkoruen Mukuodo Reszvenytarsasag (Hungary) will take part in a tender to develop DataHub software for the power commercial accounting administrator, the press service of national energy company Ukrenergo has reported.
“Evaluation of the offers will be held in accordance with the principles and rules of procurement of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development [IBRD, which financed the project]. Evaluation results are subject to mandatory coordination with the bank,” the company said in the report.
As reported, a total of 14 companies bought papers for the tender as of middle of March.
Initially the tender to create DataHub was announced on September 19, 2017. The tender failed to take place due to the absence of high-quality bids. The repeated tender was launched on September 18, 2018 after the review of tender documents and their approval by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which finances the project. The date of opening bids was postponed several times under requests of bidders, Ukrenergo said.
According to the power commercial accounting code, Ukrenergo is the power commercial accounting administrator on the retail market, which new model was launched on January 1, 2019.
The DataHub is a centralized platform to ensure the data exchange with a single database of the commercial accounting points. Currently distribution system operators and state-owned enterprise Energomarket fulfill this function without the proper software.
Ernst & Young is waiting for a spike in proposals to insure cybersecurity risks in Ukraine in 2019, according to a study by Ernst & Young Global Limited posted by the Ukrainian representative office of the company.
“The high level of damage to business from cybercrime around the world encourages companies to look for ways to manage these risks from the outside. One of the available options is to insure cyber risks, so similar offers from insurance companies are the expected trend of 2019 in Ukraine,” Senior Manager of information technology and IT risk management department of EY in Ukraine Dmytro Lazuchenkov said.
According to EY Global Information Security Survey 2018–2019, Ukrainian businesses are still characterized by the active migration of large Enterprise IT solutions to cloud services and the performance of business-critical operations in public “clouds.”
In a highly competitive environment, cloud solution providers are trying to reduce costs by reducing investment in technical tools and staff skills that are necessary to ensure the security of a cloud solution. This leads to the fact that cloud environments are becoming more susceptible to attacks by cybercriminals,” the company said in a press release.
EY said that the state-run institutions of Ukraine also should not forget about countering cyber threats.
According to EY Global Information Security Survey 2018-2019, vulnerabilities with the most increased risk exposure over the past 12 months were careless/unaware employees (34%), Outdated security controls (26%), unauthorized access (13%), and related to cloud-computing use (10%).
Most organizations (82%) are not sure if they successfully identify cybersecurity incidents. Among organizations suffered from incidents over the past 12 months, less than one third (31%) say that the incident was revealed by the cybersecurity service of the company.
EY said that 60% of organizations say that the person directly responsible for information security is not a board member. Only 18% of organizations say that information security fully influences business strategy plans on a regular basis.
