KYIV. April 5 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukrainian Sea Port Authority plans to send UAH 966 million to develop berth infrastructure by the end of this year, Authority Head Raivis Veckagans has said.
“We would receive the most optimal work of contractors in the port infrastructure in terms of the price only after considerably expanding competition at tenders of the authority and opening the market to world-renowned companies. We are facilitating the blueprints documents in line with FIDIC international standards. This would provide for the trilateral analysis of projects, transparency of the process and the indispensable attribute “quality,” he said at the Port Infrastructure Development Day organized by Ukrainian Sea Port Authority jointly with the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine in Kyiv on Tuesday.
At the event the authority presented plans to develop port infrastructure for coming years to leading global contractors.
Veckagans said that the blueprints approval procedures for construction of facilities using budget funds should be relaxed. The authority has drawn up draft amendments to relevant government resolutions.
“Their adoption would help to remove the double blueprint approval procedure, relax capital investment process and reduce time for approval of projects to two years. Soon we will discuss our proposals with experts and business,” he said.
President of the American Chamber of Commerce Andy Hunder said that the public presentation of plans to develop port infrastructure helps to provide for transparency of tenders.
“Business and Ukrainian Sea Port Authority are interested not only in informing on the current and future projects at ports, but first in carrying out works, especially for announced capital investment in the amount of around UAH 3.5 billion for construction and reconstruction of berths and dredging works. The implementation of the announced projects, including the start of new ones approved by the government should be reflected in the financial plan of the authority. This would allow using the declared investment,” Hunder said.
Deputy Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities Economy Minister Lev Partskhaladze who was present at the event said that it is important to build port infrastructure sticking modern technologies and solutions.
“Both reconstruction and new construction of ports should be carried out only using modern technologies. One of the key tasks of the Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities Economy Ministry is brining construction requirements in line with international principles, taking into account newest technologies. Our country has a large potential in the implementation of these projects,” he said.
KYIV. April 5 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Public joint-stock company State Food-Grain Corporation seeks to buy first 500 out of 3,000 grain wagons planned for purchase by the end of 2017 from Ukrainian manufacturers, Deputy Board Chairman of State Food-Grain Corporation Andriy Zadiraka said at a press conference on Tuesday.
“During six months we had held difficult talks with our Chinese partner and today we have reached agreement to buy a first batch of grain wagons. Now several Ukrainian manufacturers are being discussed. I think that after completing the national approval procedure soon we will buy first 500 wagons by the end of this year,” he said.
Zadiraka said that the company is mulling the purchase of wagons from large suppliers – Kriukiv Car Building Works, Dniprovahonmash and Karpaty plant.
“We have proposed to the Chinese corporation to consider the provision of around 420 million from the funds of the credit line, taking into account a shortage of wagons on the market. The only problem that we started the talks six months ago, and the price of wagons is gradually growing,” he said.
The government in August 2010 decided to create the State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine. The corporation has a chain of branches, comprised of grain storage facilities, flourmills, fodder factories and a cereals factory. The 53 subdivisions of the corporation can store a total of 3.75 million tonnes of grain, which includes the grain handling capacities of Odesa and Mykolaiv ports of some 2.5 million tonnes of grain cargo per year.
KYIV. April 5 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects that Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada will adopt a law on agricultural land circulation in May 2017 that will allow for the removal of the moratorium on land sales.
“Parliamentary approval of the law on agricultural land circulation is expected by end-May 2017 (a modification and new deadline for the missed end-September 2016 structural benchmark), allowing for the current moratorium on the sale of agricultural land to expire by the end of 2017,” reads a memorandum signed by Ukraine and the IMF posted on the IMF’s website.
As reported, the Ukrainian government initially expected that the bill on agricultural land circulation will be passed by the end of December 2016. Instead, Verkhovna Rada at the end of October extended a moratorium on agricultural land sale imposed in 2002 until 2018.
Parliament instructed its committees and Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry to draw up relevant bills within six months. Later several lawmakers from the parliamentary coalition submitted bill No. 5535 on agricultural land circulation to the parliament.
KYIV. April 5 (Interfax-Ukraine) – HarvEast agroholding hopes to build a seed plant with a capacity of 10 tonnes per hour by the end of 2017.
“This year we will build a new plant. The optimistic plans for the launch [of the plant] are July-August of 2017,” HarvEast Director General Dmytro Skorniakov told reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday.
He said that the plant will post-processing of seeds of leguminous and grain crops.
Skorniakov said that 70% of investment into the plant is own funds of the holding.
Earlier the company had a seed plant, but it lost control over the enterprise due to hostilities in eastern Ukraine.
An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported that on April 5 HarvEast signed a cooperation agreement with Maisadour, the seed company.
HarvEast would provide 50 ha for hybrids, including 20 ha irrigated in Donetsk region.
Maisadour would provide parent sunflower lines for planting seeds to HarvEast. Then Maisadour will assign the number to the batch and process the seeds at own plant in Dnipropetrovsk region and then the seeds will be returned to HarvEast.
In 2017, the agroholding seeks to install irrigation systems on 400 ha and in coming five years to expand irrigated areas to 3,000 ha.
Skorniakov said that investment into one hectare is $1,500-2,500.
HarvEast is an agricultural holding. Its core business is crop production (cultivation of wheat, sunflower, barley, perennial grasses, corn) and dairy farming.
Its shareholders are System Capital Management and Smart-holding.
KYIV. April 5 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Ukrainian authorities remain committed to the privatization of PJSC Odesa Port-Side Plant by the first half of 2017 and in parallel, they plan to initiate the privatization of a number of large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) identified for privatization by end-September 2017, according to a memorandum of Ukraine and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published on Tuesday.
“In parallel, they plan to initiate the privatization of a number of large SOEs identified for privatization by end-September 2017: PJSC Centrenergo, Turboatom, whose shares will be immediately transferred to the State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPFU), and the regional energy distribution companies, obloenergos,” the IMF said.
According to the document, similarly, the Ukrainian government expects the adoption of legislation allowing for the full privatization of Ukrspyrt, Ukraine’s state-owned producer of spirits, which consists of about 150 related SOEs, by end-March 2017, with the objective to have the contest sale completed by end-September 2017.
Parliament will adopt amendments to the privatization law to improve transparency and safeguards, and to further streamline the privatization process for medium-sized enterprises by end-August 2017 (a new deadline for this structural benchmark, reset from end-December 2016).
In addition, based on the triage and facilitated also by the adoption of legislation to reduce the list of companies banned from privatization, expected by end-June 2017, we will develop a schedule for transferring additional SOEs from the line ministries to the SPFU. The shares of all companies that are planned to be offered for sale in 2017 will be transferred to the SPFU by end-March 2017.
The authorities also said that they will streamline and accelerate the privatization of small SOEs and of thousands of small assets (buildings, machinery, etc.) currently in state hands, including by holding electronic auctions through our ProZorro system.
KYIV. April 4 (Interfax-Ukraine) – One of the largest crop protection agent and seed producer in the world Syngenta under the Good Growth Plan has been implementing the project to fight degradation of farms on the basis of the Syrokodostup farm (Kyiv region) until 2020.
One of the company’s commitments aims at solving the urgent problem of farm production: to save as much farmland as possible from degradation, the company said.
The company said that the project in Ukraine will last for five years. The company started implementing it in 2015 on 280 ha of Syrokodostup farm. The land bank of the company is around 3,500 ha.
Syngenta attracted scientists from institutions to study soil and give recommendations how to reclaim it. Syngenta is financing the studies, while the farm is obliged to stick to the recommendations using own funds. The soil changes are being monitored.
Under the Good Growth Plan in Ukraine Syngenta is committed to increase sustainability of planting corn (8%) and sunflower (15%) without expansion of areas, water consumption and other expenses.
The company selected farms in three regions – Vinnytsia, Kyiv and Cherkasy. They will take part in the project.
The company’s experts have drawn up a so-called protocol for each farm aimed at boosting the yield of some crops. In 2016, the yield of corn was increased by 5.5% and sunflower – by 6.7%.
Syngenta also trains farmers how to work safely with crop protection agents. In 2016, Syngenta specialists conducted labor safety seminars for almost 700 farmers.
Syngenta has six global commitments under the Good Growth Plan until 2020, including the increase of average productivity of the world’s major crops by 20 percent without using more land, water or inputs, the improvement of the fertility of 10 million hectares of farmland on the brink of degradation, enhancement of biodiversity on 5 million hectares of farmland, reaching 20 million smallholders and enable them to increase productivity by 50%, training 20 million farm workers on labor safety, especially in developing countries and striving for fair labor conditions throughout our entire supply chain network.
Syngenta is a leading agriculture company helping to improve global food security by enabling millions of farmers to make better use of available resources. Through world class science and innovative crop solutions, our 28,000 people in over 90 countries are working to transform how crops are grown.
