KYIV. Aug 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Metinvest, the largest Ukrainian mining and metal holding, supplied over 4,000 tonnes of P50 rails made by Azovstal steel works (Mariupol, Donetsk region) to the Cuban market for the construction of a new railway track in January-June 2015, the company said in a press release.
The company said that the Cuban customer conducted a technical audit that confirmed the quality of Metinvest Group’s products. This type of rails is widely used for general and special-purpose railway track.
Azovstal shipped the rails to the Cuban Ministry of Transportation to be used in the construction of a railway track to the port of Mariel. The development of infrastructure for the port, which is 50 kilometers from Havana, was driven by its establishment as Cuba’s first free economic zone in 2014.
More than 200 kilometers of track have been constructed from Metinvest rails in the last three years.
Broad-gauge P50 rails and P65 rails are Metinvest’s most in demand products. Overall, the company manufactures more than 10 typical sizes of standard-gauge and narrow-gauge rails.
“Taking into consideration the high sales efficiency of rolled steel for railway tracks, Metinvest Group is developing its product range and focusing on demand in both domestic and external markets. For example, Azovstal has begun to produce rails with tempered side edges,” the company said.
KYIV. Aug 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine is to initiate cooperation with Iran, including in production, due to the expected decision of the U.S. to lift sanctions from the country, Ukraine’s Economic Development and Trade Minister Aivaras Abromavicius has said.
“On September 14-16, I’m likely to go [to Iran] with the Agricultural Minister and a large group of entrepreneurs and industrialists to establish cooperation with the country. After the U.S. sanctions are lifted, huge opportunities [will] open up there. Last week we discussed the cooperation directions with the ambassador. Mainly it concerns companies on metro engineering and other types of engineering,” he said at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers on Wednesday.
KYIV. Aug 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine intends in 2016 to open 14 trade representative offices in a new format in other countries in addition to the six that will be opened this year, Minister of Economic Development and Trade Aivaras Abromavicius has said.
“We will set up six trade representative offices in a new format this year and from the new year they will begin to work. Next year we will open 14 more [missions], i.e. 20 trade missions abroad in a new format will work by the end of 2016,” the minister said at a Cabinet meeting on August 20.
KYIV. Aug 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukrainian railways in the period from January 1 to August 17, 2015 loaded grain to over 255,000 grain carriers and shipped around 17 million tonnes of grain cargo, the press service of the State Railway Administration of Ukraine (Ukrzaliznytsia) has reported.
Ukrzaliznytsia said that in August around 1,300 grain carriers was loaded every day.
Since early 2015, over 230,000 cars with grain (almost 15 million tonnes) were loaded, which is 27% up year-over-year, including 210,700 cars with grain for exports sent to ports (13.8 million tonnes, a rise of 32.6% year-over-year). Grain was almost loaded directly from cars to ships from 6,200 cars (410,900 tonnes, a rise of 52.6%).
Daily grain loading was 1,033 cars (25.2% up).
In 17 days of August railways accelerated grain car turnover by 0.12 days, to 9.72 days.
In August 2015, the grain carrier fleet totaled 13,228 cars, which is enough to ship 2-2.5 million tonnes of grain every month.
KYIV. Aug 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Cabinet of Ministers held a meeting on Tuesday on reforming the state system for protecting intellectual property rights and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry of Ukraine was instructed to draw up five key draft laws to reform the state intellectual property rights protection system, the ministry said on its website.
The main problems of the sector were outlined at the meeting: among the largest problems are the violation of intellectual property rights online, non-payment of royalties to state-owned media, and the absence of clear rules for organizing the collective management of copyright and related rights.
“After the meeting it was decided to order that the Economic Development and Trade Ministry is to present five key draft laws, which would be the basis for the reform of the state intellectual property rights protection system, for the cabinet’s discussion within one month,” the report said.
The core principles of the reforms are protection of intellectual property rights online, regulation of the royalty collection market, prevention of patent trolling, relaxation of the intellectual property rights protection procedure in IT, public access to licenses, and toughening of punishments for violations of intellectual property rights.
In addition, the ministry, jointly with the State Service for Intellectual Property, is to conduct a stocktaking of the use of PCs and software in power agencies and offer an action plan to legalize software in public institutions.
KYIV. Aug 19 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Economic Development and Trade Ministry of Ukraine has forecast that the grain harvest in Ukraine in 2015 could total 59.1 million tonnes.
“It is projected that due to the reduction of fields with spring crops (as of June 1, 2015 the decline is 6.4%) with the small reduction of grain yield (a decline of 0.6% as of August 1, 2015) at the end of the year the pace of plant growing would slightly worsen (the grain harvest would be 59.1 million tonnes compared to 63.9 million tonnes in 2014),” the ministry said on its website.
The ministry said that cattle breeding is steadily declining due to companies in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) zone reaming inactive.
