Dragon Capital investment company could in 2017 double investment in assets in Ukraine compared to 2016, company CEO Tomas Fiala has said.
“We’ve decided the situation has improved to such an extent that we can be cautiously optimistic and can start to invest. We’ve started doing this – bought three assets here: East Gate Logistic and West Gate Logistic, and the Piramida trade and entertainment center. Next year we plan to again increase investment, in particular on transactions that are now in process. Perhaps, we plan together with the partners to invest even twice as much in acquisition of assets,” Fiala said at the fourth Retail and Development Business Summit in Kyiv.
He said Dragon Capital is interested in buying controlling stakes in the companies, whose income structure includes a forex component.
Managing Director for Direct Investment at Dragon Capital Volodymyr Tymochko said the company is considering retail and commercial real estate for investment.
Dragon Capital, established in 2000, is one of the largest investment companies in Ukraine. It works in the field of direct investment and financial services, provides a full range of investment banking and brokerage services for corporate and private clients.
KYIV. Dec 5 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Sales of new passenger cars in Ukraine grew by 48% in November year-over-year and by 26% compared to October 2016, to 7,372 units, Auto-Consulting has reported.
“A record-breaking splash in sales of new passenger cars was recorded in November first in the past two years,” the experts said.
The Ukrainian car market expanded by 39% in January-November 2016, to 56,934 units.
Growth of car sales in November was seen almost at all market players.
Toyota and Renault were the two leaders on the market in November with 811 cars sold and market share of over 11%.
New Kia cars sales rose by 54%, exceeding 500 cars (third in November and sixth in October). The brand’s market share grew by 1.2 percentage points, to 6.1%.
Skoda dealers boosted sales by 18.2%, Ford dealers – by almost 57%, VW – by almost 70%, Hyundai – by 31.4% and Nissan – by 30.3% (all from the top ten brands with large sales).
Many brands boosted sales by several times. In particular, Seat, Great Wall, Chery, Fiat and Infiniti finished the month with record-breaking sales.
Auto-Consulting said that the increase in new passenger car sales in Ukraine in November is linked to two factors: stirring up in the corporate segment and currency instability.
KYIV. Dec 5 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Dnipro-based Pivdenne Machine Building Plant named after Makarov (Pivdenmash) has shipped to the U.S. Orbital ATK Inc. two main structures of the first stage of the Antares medium-class launch vehicle, whose cargo flights to the International Space Station (ISS) under a contract with NASA have resumed in October after its upgrading.
The press service of the State Space Agency of Ukraine told Interfax-Ukraine that on Thursday the structures were shipped from the plant to the Mykolaiv port for sending them to the launch site.
“The customer will accept the products at a port in Delaware, the United States,” the press service said.
Ukraine and the United States have been cooperating under the Antares program since 2008. Orbital ATK designed the Antares launch vehicle under a contract with NASA worth $1.9 billion.
The basic structure of the first-stage launcher was designed by Pivdenne Design Bureau and produced at Pivdenmash. Ukraine’s Hartron-Arkos, Hartron-Ucom, Chezara (Chernihiv Plant of Radio Equipment), and Rapid are also involved in cooperation on the project.
In October 2014, the launch to the International Space Station of a private cargo spacecraft, Cygnus, atop an Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops flight facility in the state of Virginia ended in failure: the rocket exploded just seconds after the liftoff. The failure was traced to a fault in the first stage engines.
After this, Orbital ATK decided to replace the first stage engine. Following a tender for the new version of the Antares, Russian RD-181 oxygen-kerosene engines were selected as the engines of the first stage. Ukrainian experts ensured replacement and compatibility of the new engines of the first stage with a minimum change in the basic configuration of the missile.
Five launches of Antares are scheduled to be conducted by the end of 2018, six more between 2019 and 2024.
According to earlier reports, the U.S. plans to fully stop using Russian RD-180 engines, which are now used by the rocket Atlas 5 of the U.S. United Launch Alliance (ULA)., by 2019 due to the restrictions imposed on military-technical cooperation with Russia by the Congress in 2014. The supply of RD 180 engines, which are installed on new rocket Antares for the ISS, is now limited to the civilian sphere. Among the participants in the tender fort the development of engines to replace the Russian RD 190, which the U.S. Air Force announced in June 2015, was Ukraine’s design and construction bureau Pivdenne (Dnipro) with its new liquid RD 815.
At the moment, Ukraine and the U.S. continue negotiations on cooperation in rocket engines production.
KYIV. Dec 5 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers advocates three-year tax benefits for imports of equipment, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said.
“We are thinking how to include VAT benefits for imported equipment even in the 2017 national budget. We want to make this benefit lasting for 36 months of payment rescheduling… We will think for what sectors,” he said at a meeting with representatives of Ukrainian and foreign business at the second International Trade and Industry Conference “FTAs: Opportunities and Challenges for Ukraine and Partners.”
He said that the government aims at systemic support of national producers: not only the price, but localization of production facilities will be taken into account during procurement.
“The important task for our government is to restore Ukrainian industry,” he said eliciting applause from the audience.
“I understand that today there are problems with law enforcement system, supervision and customs agencies. I would not be a backup dancer for them. They would have to terrorizing businesses or I will announce the public war against them,” he said, adding actually this war has been started.
To create a million jobs in the country within two years through extending loans to the self-employed and small- and medium-sized businesses is a feasible task. Utilizing mechanisms of public-private partnership, involving international donors’ funds, it can be completed in the short-term outlook, while preventing further economic crisis and tacking unemployment. It is very important to the country, which is experiencing a deep social and economic crisis, forcedly allocates significant resources for military operations and tries to solve the problems of internally displaced persons. These issues were on the agenda of a Kyiv business forum, “Ukraine is a Country of Entrepreneurs.”
“Jobs are of great value around the world. The effectiveness of government in democratic countries is assessed by number of jobs. In addition to the allocation of funds and support of financial institutions that do this, we demand that the authorities preserve the simplified taxation system with additional incentives for start-ups, eliminate regulatory authorities’ pressure on businesses, obligatorily draw up and implement a state program to preserve and create new jobs in the country,” President of the Ukrainian League of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Anatoliy Kinakh said.
“Kyiv is the economic capital of Ukraine with good reason, as it does a lot to let businesses develop in a fair, open way with transparent rules. The city now has an open budget, a transparent electronic procurement system has been launched, open auctions are held for work on free trading platforms. I think that UAH 10 million in micro-crediting support is only the beginning. We’ll be increasing this resource,” Vitaliy Klitschko assured.
“Boosting jobs will be an invincible weapon of Ukraine. Let us not forget: It is small businesses that form the basis of the middle class, determine the solvency of the country and inspiration for democratic transformation. That’s why the small business lending program will work in all regional centers, not only there, as similar business forums will be held everywhere in support of this initiative,” Anatoliy Kinakh summed up.
The next regional forum will take place in Dnipro on November 24.
KYIV. Dec 1 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers has published a resolution introducing reference prices of some medicines from January 1, 2017 and their reimbursement from April 1, 2017.
Government resolution No. 862 on the regulation of prices of medicines and resolution No. 863 introducing reimbursement of the cost of medicines were posted on the government’s website on Tuesday.
As reported, the government has approved a resolution introducing reference prices for medicines to treat cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and bronchial asthma from January 1, 2017 and launching the reimbursement program for them from April 1, 2017.
The price regulation would concern medicines included in the national list of major medicines and the international nonproprietary name (INN) list. The cost of these medicines is to be reimbursed.
The upper marketing markup for medicines that the state reimburses partially or in full is 5% and the upper retail markup with all taxes and duties is 15%.
The price of medicines in Poland, Latvia, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic are used to calculated reference prices of INN.
The reimbursement program for cardiovascular diseases includes 16 INN, for bronchial asthma – three INN and diabetes mellitus – two INN.
