KYIV. Feb 27 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The agrarian receipts project has helped farmers to attract over UAH 467 million thanks to the issue of 80 receipts from the moment when the pilot project was launched in 2014, Ukraine’s Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry has reported.
“Today agrarian receipts are available in eight regions and show good results. The documents allowed farmers to raise over UAH 467 million. No bankruptcy case was recorded,” Deputy Minister Olena Kovaleva said.
She said that now the ministry is working on the creation of a national register of agrarian receipts. This will help to extend the project to the entire territory of Ukraine. Today preparatory work to organize a tender to create the register has been finished. The register will be introduced by late September 2017 with support of the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
“It is planned to select the designer of the register in March and April. The functionality of the resister will be tested and the test launch will be organized in May through August. I hope that by the end of September we would have a full-featured national register. This would help to extend the project and attract more funds to the agricultural sector,” Kovaleva said.
As reported, the agrarian receipts project in Ukraine is being introduced by a member of the World Bank Group – IFC – in partnership with Switzerland. Practical use of agrarian receipts in Ukraine started in 2014 in Poltava region.
In September 2015 they were expanded to three regions – Kharkiv, Cherkasy and Vinnytsia, and in 2016 four more regions were added – Mykolaiv, Sumy, Ternopil and Khmelnytsky. A total of 49 agrarian receipts have been implemented and 23 are being implemented.
KYIV. Feb 27 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Public joint-stock company AvtoKrAZ (Kremenchuk, Poltava region), the sole heavy truck producer in Ukraine, saw a 4.6-fold rise in net loss in 2016, reaching UAH 1.431 billion.
According to an announcement on holding the general meeting of shareholders scheduled for March 30, uncovered loss as of January 1, 2017 totaled UAH 1.872 billion compared to UAH 449.41 million a year ago.
As reported, in 2015 the plant saw a 2.4-fold rise in loss on 2014, totaling UAH 313.91 million.
According to the announcement, current liabilities of the company in 2016 grew by 5.6%, to UAH 4.351 billion and noncurrent liabilities – by 6%, to UAH 1.839 billion.
The company saw a 4.2% rise in debts, to UAH 3.13 billion, and its assets narrowed by 17.8%, to UAH 5.042 billion.
Net worth as of January 1, 2017 was minus UAH 1.148 billion, while as of January 1, 2016 it was UAH 282.9 million.
The shareholders will discuss the reports of managing bodies of the company and reshuffle the supervisory board and audit commission.
The shareholders plan to consider the reorganization of the company from the public JSC to a private JSC.
AvtoKrAZ makes 33 basic vehicle models, and more than 260 modifications and trim levels for civilian and military vehicles.
AvtoKrAZ is part of the Finance and Credit financial and industrial group, controlled by Ukrainian businessman Kostiantyn Zhevaho.
KYIV. Feb 24 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Busfor Ukraine, the online bus ticket service intends to introduce some new products for bus passengers in 2017, Busfor Ukraine Head Oleksandr Pavlovich has said.
“Busfor focuses on improving the quality of the sector. We cannot influence on vehicles, but we can place efforts in other things. What are we doing? We actively take part in the e-ticket introduction project of the Infrastructure Ministry. We are introducing services which passengers can receive from us,” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
He said that a problem when the trip is canceled due to technical or weather reasons and passengers are not insured against this.
“We are drawing up insurance policies against cancelation of trips of baggage loss jointly with insurance companies. No one has provided yet these services and we will be the first,” Pavlovich said.
In addition, the company is designing a food delivery service before the trip to solve the problems with food with the help of partners. Food can be selected on the website in advance.
“Soon we plan to add photos of buses. Passengers would be able to assess them before the trip. This is important for the passengers… We want to experiment with 3D photos of buses,” he said.
Busfor in 2016 sold around 1 million of bus tickets. Its founders are Illia Yekushevsky and Artem Altukhov.
KYIV. Feb 24 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Grain and oilseeds harvest of Industrial Milk Company (IMC) in 2016 grew by 12% compared to 2015, to 717,000 tonnes.
The holding said in a press release on Thursday that milk production in 2016 fell by 22%, to 15,000 tonnes. The decrease in milk production volumes was associated with the implementation of the project on optimization of the cattle herd. As a result of the project, the average milk yield in the IMC increased by 2% compared with 2015, to 5.6 tonnes per forage cow.
Potato harvest last year rose by 31%, to 21,000 tonnes.
Sales in the crop planting segment totaled 691,000 tonnes (9% down on 2015), including around 502,000 tonnes of corn (17% down). The decline in sales in the crop farming segment was due to lower carry-over stocks of corn at the beginning of 2016. 80% of sales in the crop farming segment (about 556,000 tonnes) was exported.
According to the report, improvement of cultivation technology, along with favorable weather conditions have led to significant yields growth of almost all crops: corn gross yield grew by 24%, to 8.1 tonne per ha, soybeans – by 31%, to 3.4 tonnes per ha, potatoes – by 38%, to 40.4 tonner per ha, and for wheat it fell by 5%, to 4.8 tonnes per ha.
IMC focuses on cultivation of grains, oilseeds and potatoes. It is one of the largest milk producers in Ukraine. It owns a storage capacity of 554,000 tonnes of grains and oilseeds. Its land bank is 136,600 ha in Poltava, Chernihiv and Sumy regions.
