Top managers of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) at a meeting of the National Investment Council of Ukraine in Davos (Switzerland) has confirmed their readiness to consider investment in the capital of state-owned Ukrgasbank, Head of the Office of the National Investment Council Yuliya Kovaliv has said.
As reported, in November 2017, Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance agreed on cooperation with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in the process of privatization of Ukrgasbank. The memorandum of cooperation also envisaged a possibility of entering the capital of the bank by IFC to support its sale. The investment will depend on several factors, including the outcome of the due diligence of the bank.
Ukrgasbank was established in 1993 and as of January 1, 2017 the state represented by the Ministry of Finance owned 94.9% of its shares. Since 2015, the bank has been included in the list of state-owned facilities of strategic importance for the economy and national security.
The Government of Ukraine and the Swiss Federal Council have signed a protocol amending the bilateral convention on the avoidance of double taxation.
“The signing of this protocol creates favorable conditions for investors in Ukraine and Switzerland, stimulates business initiative of entrepreneurs, regulates issues of international taxation of income between states and eliminates tax discrimination,” President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, who attended the signing ceremony in Davos, wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday.
Poroshenko met with Swiss President Ueli Maurer and agreed to continue interaction between the competent authorities in the matter of returning assets illegally withdrawn from Ukraine by former officials, Ukraine’s presidential press-service reported.
During the meeting, Poroshenko invited his Swiss counterpart to visit Ukraine.
Ukrainian Finance Minister Oksana Markarova and Maurer signed the protocol.
According to a posting on the website of the Finance Ministry of Ukraine, the signing of the protocol is aimed at avoiding double taxation of individual and companies’ income earned on the territories of the two countries.
“This will be achieved both by dividing the right to tax certain types of income between countries depending on their place of origin, and by taking into account the amounts of taxes paid in one country in tax liabilities of a taxpayer in one country,” the Finance Ministry said.
According to the ministry, the signed protocol provides for an increase in the tax rates of interest and royalties from nil to 5%, improving the procedure for resolving tax disputes through arbitration, and expanding the parties’ ability to exchange tax information without mentioning the requirements of national tax interest or bank secrecy.
In addition, the document establishes rules of applying the right to receive benefits – they will not be provided regarding the type of income or property, if one of the main goals of any agreement or an agreement between economic entities was to directly or indirectly receive such a benefit.
“These rates and regulations suit the general practice of concluding such international treaties on the avoidance of double taxation and protocols thereto with other countries by Ukraine,” the Finance Ministry said.
After signing the protocol, the countries are to implement the internal procedures required for the ratification of the agreement, the ministry said.
The town of Solone in Dnipropetrovsk region has been determined as the site for the construction of a new airport, Tetiana Rychkova, the MP from the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko faction, has told Interfax-Ukraine.
The parliamentarian said that the decision was made on January 25 at an expanded meeting at the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine with the participation of Chairman of Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council Hlib Pryhunov, Deputy Head of Dnipropetrovsk Regional Administration Volodymyr Yurchenko, Head of the State Aviation Service Oleksandr Bilchuk, Head of the State Agency for Infrastructure Projects Mykola Bozhko, Tetiana Rychkova, as well as representatives of UkSATSE and industry experts. According to the people’s deputy, the majority of experts who took part in the discussion supported this decision
“The construction of an airport in Solone will make it possible to create a complex technological facility in accordance with the modern international standards and equip it accordingly. The decision was made taking into account many factors,” Rychkova noted.
In 2018, Ukrainian coking plants increased the production of blast furnace coke with 6% moisture content by 4.1% compared to 2017—up to 10.826 million tonnes.
In December 2018, a total of 924,000 tonnes of coke was produced while in November the coke production stood at 917,000 tonnes, the Dnipro-based Ukrkoks association of coking plants told the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
Ukrkoks Director General Anatoliy Starovoit said coke chemical plants worked as normal, providing metallurgical enterprises with coke according to the existing production plans.
“In January, the production has decreased to some extent compared to December because of a smaller number of orders and due to some technical reasons. However, the manufacturing enterprises have been supplied with blast furnace coke in full, there are no problems,” he said.
When asked about the plans for the entire 2019, Starovoit said that there are two forecasting options for producing coke in the association: at the level of 2018 and with a 5% increase.
“We have not yet received plans from iron smelters, so we have planned two scenarios for the production of coke. In January, the contracting process is taking place; therefore, later there will be a clearer picture of our production plans,” the director general said.
As reported earlier, in 2017, 14,289 tonnes of enriched coke coal was supplied to coke-chemical enterprises, of which 3.458 million tonnes accounted for Ukrainian production and 10.831 million tonnes were imported. The ratio of imported and Ukrainian coal was 78.8% to 24.2%. In particular, the imports arrived from the Russian Federation—6.3 million tonnes, the United States and Canada—3.923 million tonnes, Kazakhstan—377,000 tonnes, and the Czech Republic—187,000 tonnes.
The construction oblivion rules introduced by the Ministry of Regional Development, Building and Housing of Ukraine in 2018 have allowed to accept into service about 9,000 buildings of CC1 class (minor class of consequences).
Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Regional Development Hennadiy Zubko told a press conference on January 24 that the “construction oblivion” for small houses was one of the main changes in the construction industry in 2018, along with the decentralization of powers of the State Architectural and Construction Inspectorate of Ukraine, the introduction of new state construction standards, reduction in licensing procedures, etc.
As reported earlier, the rules were developed in pursuance of law No. 2363 on amendments to Section V, Clause 9 of the Final Provisions of the law on the regulation of urban development activities to extend the deadline for the commissioning of construction projects built without a permit for construction work adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on March 22, 2018.
The law provides for an indefinite term for the legalization of self-erected facilities belonging to CC1 class. A body of the state architectural and construction inspection agency is obliged to accept the object in operation after a technical survey within 10 days from the date of the application.
The law applies to individual residential buildings, garden cottages, and country houses with a total area of up to 300 square meters, as well as amenity (homestead) buildings and structures with a total area of 300 square meters (built from August 5, 1992 to April 9, 2015) and agricultural buildings and facilities (built before March 12, 2011).
The Concorde Capital investment group has won the second auction to sell assets used as collateral for commercial loans taken in the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), Deputy Managing Director of the Deposit Guarantee Fund of Ukraine Svitlana Rekrut has said.
“The auction was held on DebtХ (Delaware, the United States) on January 16, 2019. This is so-called “U.S. platform.” We sold the pool [of assets] for UAH 48.079 million. Only two bidders took part in the auction, and the winner is Concorde Capital,” she said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
Concorde Capital CEO Igor Mazepa confirmed to Interfax-Ukraine that the company won the auction.
The final agreement has not yet been signed.
Rekrut also said that the anchor assets in this pool were the assets of Eurogasbank, including the Geneva Hotel in Truskavets, and other real estate. Literally two weeks before the auction at DebtХ, the ex-shareholder of Eurogasbank, through bankruptcy and the purchase and sale agreement, withdrew the liens.
“That is, the re-registration took place almost on the eve of the auction” Rekrut said.
According to a source of Interfax-Ukraine, the beneficiaries of the Geneva hotel in Truskavets are people’s deputy Andriy Lopushansky (Petro Poroshenko Bloc parliamentary faction) and ex-shareholder of Eurogasbank Oleksiy Ivchenko.
As reported on the website of the Deposit Guarantee Fund, the initial price of the pool of assets with the book value of UAH 6.5 billion was set at UAH 240.394 million. The assets were bought at the lowest price of the lot.
All assets pledged by the National Bank have repeatedly been put up for individual trading on the ProZorro platform and were not sold even after reducing their value to 20% of the book value. Then, these unsold assets were pooled and transferred to the DebtX and First Financial Network (FFN, Oklahoma City, the United States) to sell them using the Dutch model as part of a joint pilot project of the NBU and the Deposit Guarantee Fund. In this case, the specified pool of assets was already put up for auction at DebtX and FFN a year and a half ago.
Eurogasbank was founded in 2006. The largest shareholders in the second quarter 2014 were Oleksiy Ivchenko with 39.6296% of shares, Halyna Ivchenko with 31.9574%, and Khrystyna Ivchenko with 17.7778%.
The NBU on November 17, 2014 approved a resolution on the abolition of the banking license of the bank and its liquidation.
