KYIV. Aug 21 (Interfax) – Ukraine bought fresh nuclear fuel worth $208.119 million in January-June 2015, the Ukrainian state statistics service reports.
Ukraine bought only Russian-made nuclear fuel for its nuclear power plants in the first half of 2015.
In 2014, Ukraine bought nuclear fuel worth in total $628.18 million, including $588.83 million worth of nuclear fuel from Russia and $39.35 million from Sweden.
Energoatom, the Ukrainian state enterprise operating the four nuclear power plants, purchases nuclear fuel under contracts with the Russian company TVEL and Sweden’s Westinghouse Electric Sweden AB.
Energoatom operates 15 nuclear power units equipped with water-cooled reactors with an aggregate installed output of 13.835 GWt.
KYIV. Aug 21 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Ukrainian government has approved a draft joint letter with the National Bank of Ukraine to the World Bank to raise a loan of $500 million under the Second Financial Sector Development Policy Loan (FSDPL2).
According to cabinet resolution No. 830 of August 12, the Finance Ministry is responsible for the preparation of the project in general, and the Individuals’ Deposit Guarantee Fund and the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) are also attracted to work on the project.
Among the goals of the project are strengthening the operation, financial and regulatory ability of the Deposit Guarantee Fund to regulate insolvent banks, increasing the solvency of the banking system via the fulfillment of bank recapitalization and restructuring plans, and reinforcing the legal and institutional basis to increase the stability and effectiveness of the banking system.
As reported, the World Bank approved FSDPL1 of $500 million in August 2014 and it was closed in late November 2014. It was planned that FSDPL2 would be provided in early 2015.
However, the agenda of the World Bank’s board for August-September has not yet included the FSDPL2 project.
KYIV. Aug 21 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is organizing a syndicated financing facility of $130 million to Nibulon (Mykolaiv), one of the largest Ukrainian producers and exporters of grains and oilseeds.
“The new facility will consist of an A loan of up to $45 million for the EBRD’s own account and a B loan of up to $90 million, which will be syndicated to commercial banks,” the bank said on Friday.
EBRD Principal Adviser for External Affairs Anton Usov told Interfax-Ukraine that the bank has signed all the documents required, although the syndicate is being organized by other institutions.
The EBRD said that the facility would help secure the company’s seasonal needs for working capital to carry out trade transactions.
The bank said that it has been successfully working with Nibulon since 2010. It has organized the financing of almost $200 million under various projects for the company.
The EBRD is the largest international financial investor in Ukraine. As of July 1, 2015, the bank had a total cumulative commitment of EUR 11 billion in 345 projects in the country.
Nibulon was created in 1991. It is one of the largest operators in the grain market. The company has a total silo capacity of more than 1.7 million tonnes, as well as its own transshipment terminal in Mykolaiv.
KYIV. Aug 21 (Interfax-Ukraine) – National Energy Company Ukrenergo, after holding an international tender, has signed a contract to expand and modernize the Kyivska substation with Croatia’s Dalekovod, the press service of the Ukrainian company has reported.
The press service said that Dalekovod would design, supply, assemble and launch all the required equipment to expand the existing 750 kV and 330 kV switchboards at the Kyivska substation – a 1,000 MVA transformer, main high voltage equipment, communications systems, relay protection and automated equipment and an electricity metering automated system with integration into the automated technological process management system at the substation.
The second 750/330 kV automated transformer at the 750 kV Kyivska substation will be installed during the construction of the 330 kV Chornobyl NPP-Pivnichna power line to the Kyivska substation. Its installation is required to adhere to the systemic requirements of stability of the operation of the Ukrainian power grid, Central power grid, and Kyiv city’s power grid.
The pre-contract talks are being held with the winter of the tender to build the 330 kV Chornobyl NPP-Pivnichna power line to the Kyivska substation. The contract could be signed in late September 2015.
The press service said that the realization of the contracts would ensure a sufficient transformer capacity of the 750 kV Kyivska substation to obtain electricity from Rivne and Khmelnytsky NPP and would improve the connection of the substation with the 330 kV lines of the Central power grid. This would increase the stability of electricity supplies in Kyiv city and region and the central part of Ukraine in general.
KYIV. Aug 21 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has said that the main stage of the implementation of the Community-led Urban Strategies in Historic Towns (COMUS) jointly with the European Union has started in the pilot towns of Lutsk (Volyn region) and Zhovkva (Lviv region).
“The joint project with the EU on urban strategies COMUS is entering the main stage of the implementation. The pilot towns-participants are Lutsk and Zhovkva,” the cabinet wrote on its Twitter page on Friday.
The COMUS project is a joint project of the Council of European the European Commission included in the EU action plan for Ukraine. The project is aimed at prompting national and local authorities to strategically renew and develop small and medium historic towns and their suburbs via revitalization of cultural inheritance to modern needs, rehabilitation of traditional housing an expansion of the range of opportunities for its use.
The COMUS project is the next stage of the Pilot Project on Rehabilitating the Cultural Heritage in Historic Towns (PP2) which was realized in 2008-2011 under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. Along with Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Azerbaijan took part in the project.
KYIV. Aug 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry of Ukraine has said that the harvesting of early grain crops from 10.1 million hectares has been finished and 36.7 million tonnes of grain has been threshed with an average yield of 36.2 centners per hectare.
“This year farmers threshed more than last year – 2 million tonnes more [of early grain crops]. This year 36.7 million tonnes of grain was threshed from 10.1 million hectares with a yield of 36.2 centners per hectare,” Minister Oleksiy Pavlenko said at a briefing in Kyiv on Wednesday.
He said that farmers from Odesa (3 million tonnes), Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv (2.8 million tonnes each) and Zaporizhia (2.6 million tonnes) regions saw the best results.
Pavlenko said that 26.8 million tonnes of wheat was harvested from 6.8 million hectares with a yield of 39.4 centners per hectare, 8.5 million tonnes of barley was harvested from 2.8 million hectares with a yield of 30.5 centners per hectare, 365,000 tonnes of rye was harvested from 144,000 hectares and 248,000 tonnes of oats was harvested from 203,000 hectares.
A total of 392,000 tonnes of peas were harvested from 169,000 hectares with a yield of 23.2 centners per hectare, 1.7 million tonnes of rapeseeds was harvested from 674,000 hectares with yield of 25.7 centners per hectare.
Harvesting of buckwheat, millet and soybeans is underway, the ministry said.
