Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and President of Azerbaijan’s SOCAR state-owned oil company Rovnag Abdullayev at a meeting in Kyiv discussed prospects of expanding cooperation in the sphere of supplies of high-quality aviation fuel and the possibility of its production in Ukraine.
The press service of the head of state reported on Saturday that the SOCAR president thanked for the opportunity to take part in the session of the National Investment Council under the President of Ukraine. He said that the company “feels comfortable in Ukraine and develops rapidly.”
The parties discussed the “Turkish projects” of the company, the involvement of Ukraine in them and the prospects for further development of the oil refining complex in Ukraine.
“Next year, after the completion of strategic projects in Turkey, all attention will be paid to Ukraine. As development here is very successful,” the president of SOCAR said, adding that “in ten years in Ukraine, good conditions for business have been created just recently.”
Poroshenko pointed out the strategic nature of cooperation between the two states.
“I believe that we must take full advantage of those opportunities for the development and deepening of cooperation, including in the energy sector,” the president said. He also pointed out the importance of using this potential to diversify energy supply to Ukraine.
The parties also discussed the possibility of expanding cooperation in the supply of high-quality aviation fuel and its possible production in Ukraine given sharp increase in the air passenger traffic at Ukrainian airports, in particular, Boryspil, Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odesa and other Ukrainian cities.
The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) is one of the largest operators of the world fuel and energy market. The key areas of the company’s activities are: development of new deposits, oil and gas production, refining of oil products, trading and research activities.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov hope that the towns of Reni in Odesa region and Varna in Bulgaria would be connected by a highway.
“We have arranged that we would step up the issues of building a highway of the transport corridor between Reni in Odesa region and Varna [in Bulgaria] across Romania. I hope that the resources of the European Union will be on our side as well. We will also attract our Romanian partners. And we will do our best to ensure that in the near future you can drive from Odesa to Varna in a few hours,” Poroshenko told reporters on Saturday in Kyiv after the negotiations with the Bulgarian prime minister.
An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported that Poroshenko showed a map, which the Bulgarian prime minister brought, indicating the route of building the transport corridor.
“The map, which the president showed, lacks the signature of the Romanian side. The construction of this road will not be very expensive. It could be public private partnership or a joint fund of three states,” the president said.
The attractiveness of the Ukrainian real estate market for foreign investors is growing due to a decrease in the number of quality assets available for investment in Europe, Cushman & Wakefield consulting company has said.
“The narrowing of the range of investment opportunities in mature European markets creates the potential for growing interest in Europe’s peripheral markets. We already see investment interest from the countries that are our close neighbors (Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Serbia) and Ukraine has a chance to attract potential investors to its market,” the head of the capital markets department Cushman & Wakefield in Ukraine, Volodymyr Mysak, said.
According to him, the real estate market in Ukraine is undervalued: the possibility of rental growth is available in all segments of commercial real estate (offices, warehouses, retail space), and capitalization rates create attractive returns for investors.
“Capitalization rates for premium assets in office real estate are 12%, for retail space some 12.5%, and for logistics some 12.5-13%,” the expert said.
According to Cushman & Wakefield, in the fourth quarter of 2017 the European market attracted a record high volume of investments of EUR112 billion, after which the best quality assets across Europe are becoming increasingly scarce.
Cushman & Wakefield (formerly DTZ) was founded in New York in 1917. The company is a consultant in the field of commercial real estate with an annual income of $6 billion. Cushman & Wakefield operates in more than 70 countries, employing 45,000 people.
Enterprises and organizations in Ukraine in January-March 2018 received profit from ordinary activities before taxation in the amount of UAH 132.875 billion, while in January-March 2017 the figure was UAH 102.615 billion, according to the State Statistics Service.
According to the service, in the first quarter of 2018 profitable Ukrainian enterprises received UAH 177.491 billion of profit, which is 13% more than in the same period in 2017.
At the same time, 31.4% of enterprises posted a negative financial result. Their losses in January-March of this year decreased by 18% compared to January-March last year, to UAH 44.617 billion.
Kernel, one of the largest Ukrainian agrarian groups, intends to reach EBITDA of $495 million by 2021 due to doubling exports, as well as investments and strategic acquisitions.
According to the company’s financial report on the website, Kernel plans by 2021 to increase production of bulk oil to 1.877 million tonnes, sales to 1.753 million tonnes. The company plans to achieve such figures through the construction of a new processing plant or the acquisition of a local player in Western Ukraine.
In addition, the group plans to increase sales of bottled oil in monetary terms to $150 million, keeping 131 million liters in natural terms, to increase throughput to 8.9 million tonnes through the commissioning in 2019 of a new grain terminal, Transbulkterminal, as well as raise grain sales to 8 million tonnes, the storage capacity to 5 million tonnes.
The company’s net profit for the last four quarters (April 2017-March 2018) was $35 million, which is 5 times less than in the 2017 financial year. Revenue for this period was $2.124 billion, EBITDA stood at $232 million, which is 2.1% and 27.3% respectively less than the figures for 2017.
Kernel is the world’s largest producer and exporter of sunflower oil, the leading producer and supplier of agricultural products from the Black Sea region to the world markets.
The volume of services rendered by enterprises in Ukraine in January-March 2018 amounted to UAH 177.8 billion, which in comparable prices is 3% more than the level of the same period in 2017, according to the State Statistics Service of Ukraine.
According to its data, the volume of services rendered to the population was 21.8% of the total volume of services provided.
The service said in the fourth quarter of 2017 the volume of services rendered by Ukrainian enterprises grew by 0.6%, in the third quarter by 3.1%, in the second quarter by 7.7%, and in the first quarter by 14.8%.
