Over the past five years, the area sown with potatoes has increased by 2.7%, or 35,000 hectares, to 1.33 million hectares in 2020, the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club (UCAB) has said.
According to a report on the association’s website, as of September 1, 2020, almost 14.825 million tonnes of potatoes were harvested from 948,700 hectares. Despite the large number of areas from which potatoes have already been harvested, the yield per hectare is low. For comparison, in 2018 the average yield in Ukraine was 16.76 tonnes per ha, in 2019 15.21 tonnes per ha, and in 2020 15.63 tonnes per ha.
“The relatively low yield of recent years is associated with unfavorable conditions in most regions of Ukraine from May to June. That is why there was a boom in potato imports in 2019. In 2019, potato imports amounted to 246,760 tonnes, which is almost 60 times more than it was in 2018, while exports decreased to 5,610 tonnes,” the UCAB said.
In 2020, due to the pandemic, as well as unfavorable weather conditions, potato imports were also at a fairly high level. So, according to the association, in the period of January-July 2020, potato imports amounted to 233,760 tonnes for a total of $51.26 million.
According to the UCAB, Belarus is the main country-supplier of potatoes to Ukraine, almost 55.7% of all imported potatoes (130,330 tonnes) for a total of $21.42 million. Also, the top five potato importers to Ukraine were: Russia – 42,470 tonnes ($7.23 million), the Netherlands – 31,220 tonnes ($11.97 million), Egypt – 8,930 tonnes ($2.81 million), Belgium – 8,150 tonnes ($2.77 million).
According to the State Customs Service, since July, Ukraine has hardly imported potatoes – $685,000 in July and $120,630 in August, respectively, the association said.
“At the same time, from July to September inclusive, the average price for potatoes is kept at the level of UAH 6-6.50. This gives reason to believe that this year there is more than enough potatoes on the Ukrainian market for domestic consumption and in the near future one should not expect an increase in prices,” the UCAB said.
The total area of new residential and nonresidential buildings as of the start of their construction in 2018 totaled 16.706 million square meters. According to the report, the total area of residential buildings at the beginning of construction in 2018 was 12.874 million square meters, or 77% of the total new construction. Including, apartment buildings accounted for 96.7% (12.442 million square meters), single-apartment buildings accounted for 3.2% (417,600 square meters), and dormitories 0.1% (13,760 square meters).
According to statistics, nonresidential facilities, which began to build in 2018, accounted for 23% of the total new construction, or 3.8 million square meters.
Thus, the area of new construction of warehouses and industrial buildings in 2018 amounted to 974,600 square meters (25.4%), retail real estate 648,900 square meters (19.9%), buildings for public speeches, educational institutions, medical and recreational institutions 429,800 square meters (11.2%), hotels and restaurants 355,800 square meters (9.3%), and office buildings 244,400 square meters (5.9%).
Data for 2017 is not available due to the introduction of the new statistics by of the State Statistics Service.
The areas sown with agricultural crops in all categories of farms of Ukraine for the 2019 harvest will be within 27.7 million hectares, or at the 2018 level.
According to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, grain crops this year are to be sown on an area of 14.8 million hectares (54% in the structure of the areas), which corresponds to the standards for the best ratio of crops in crop rotation.
As reported, with reference to the ministry, Ukraine increased the area under winter crops in 2018 by 160,000 hectares, to 8.2 million hectares.
The gross grain harvest in Ukraine in 2018 amounted to about 70.1 million tonnes compared to 62 million tonnes in 2017.
KyivESKO LLC and JSC Commercial Industrial Bank on January 14, 2019 signed a first energy service contract in Ukraine for the amount of around UAH 3 million, using the factoring tool. The Ukrainian Association of Energy Service Companies wrote on its Facebook page that the contract was signed with the technical assistance of the UNDP project and the State Agency for Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving.
The tool allows borrowing without collateralized property, the association said. The guarantee for the loan would be money flows from energy service contracts, which KyivESKO LLC has.
In August 2018, specialists of the State Agency for Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving and experts of the UNDP project studied various models of using energy service mechanisms in European countries, in particular in Latvia, where two funds for the energy service purposes using the factoring tool were created with the help of the financing from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and public funds.
The implementation of the firsts factoring contract in the energy service area would allow other companies and financial institutions to use this experience, the association said.
KyivESKO LLC signed its first energy service contract in the housing sphere with Politekhnik housing and construction cooperative in Kyiv.
