During his visit to the United States, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with the most influential American entrepreneurs and heads of major funds, the press service of the Presidential Office reported on Friday.
The meeting was organized with the assistance of JP Morgan, the world’s largest investment bank. The total value of assets under management of the funds whose managers participated in the event exceeds 30 trillion. In particular, according to the press service, the meeting was attended by Bloomberg LP founder Michael Bloomberg, Pershing Square Capital chairman Bill Ackman, Starwood Capital chairman Barry Sternlicht, Citadel LLC founder Ken Griffin, Blackstone investment company president Jonathan Gray, BlackRock deputy chairman Philip Hildebrand, Schmidt Futures charity chairman Eric Schmidt, Kraft Group chairman Robert Kraft and others.
“The parties discussed the prospects of involving the largest American business in Ukraine’s recovery and the implementation of investment projects. American entrepreneurs and financiers confirmed their readiness to make large-scale investments in Ukraine immediately after the end of the war and the receipt of security guarantees,” the press service reports.
President Zelenskyy also had a separate meeting with Larry Fink, chairman of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company.
JSC “Ukrzaliznytsia” (UZ) announced online auctions for the lease of space at 21 railway stations. It is planned to put on Prozorro.Sales 53 objects, including at the stations in Kiev, Lviv, Uzhgorod, Truskavets, Krivoy Rog, Dnipro, Odessa, reported UZ on the page in Facebook.
“Ukrzaliznytsia stations continue to open their doors for business: online auctions for the lease of space at 21 stations have been announced. Food courts, cafes, bookstores, pharmacies, financial zones, beauty salons, flower stores…. We are confident that the changes are overdue, and they must be transparent,” the statement said.
The first online auctions in the Prozorro.Sales system will take place already on September 18. Winners of electronic bidding will be able to conclude lease agreements for two years and 360 days with the possibility of prolongation. At the first stage will be exhibited mainly zones with a small area, designed for vending machines, coffee machines, ATMs and terminals. In Kiev, zones for five ATMs and cafes are offered for rent.
UZ noted that they have studied the experience of train stations and airports in Europe, attracted local businesses and architects for consultations. In cooperation with Urban Experts, they defined the principles of zoning and a list of services that should be mandatory for railway stations.
Olympic champion Sergei Bubka said he has nothing to do with any business in the occupied territories.
“Since 2014, I have not been in the occupied territory. I was born on Ukrainian soil. I have always represented Ukraine around the world with great pride. I have always fought for Ukraine. But now a campaign to destroy my reputation has been launched against me,” he said in a video distributed on Wednesday.
“I, like every Ukrainian, made my choice from the very beginning – to be with Ukraine and to do everything possible in the fight against Russian aggression. Since 2014, I have not been in the occupied territories. I haven’t visited my relatives and I couldn’t even be at my mom’s funeral. I have nothing to do with any business in the occupied territories. My job is to support Ukrainian athletes and Ukrainian sport at the international level,” Bubka said.
“I will do everything so that the current generation of Ukrainian athletes will be able to realize their Olympic dream – to perform at the Olympic Games in Paris next year,” he stressed, adding, “To those who are trying to blacken my name, I would like to say: To fight for Ukraine in sports has always been an honor for me. To fight for the state interests of my country is the highest honor for me.”
Earlier, an investigation by Bihus.info was published, in which journalists suggest that the firm “Firm Montblanc” LLC, owned by Sergey and Vasyl Bubkas, is listed in the Russian registers.
Ukraine has a set of advantages for attracting significant investments and localizing modern production of global brands, with only security guarantees and accession to the EU required, Rostyslav Shurma, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said on the air of the national marathon “United News”.
According to him, Ukraine’s prospects are well illustrated by the example of the dialog with Sweden.
“Sweden has very good not only military technologies, but also, first of all, engineering technologies. This is a very wide range. Therefore, Sweden has the entire range of machine building, a complete portfolio, and this is critically important for the reconstruction of Ukraine, because first of all, we will need a huge amount of equipment – both for infrastructure and for the construction of new enterprises and factories,” the deputy head of the OP noted.
He emphasized that such equipment is sold not only as engineering solutions, but also together with financial packages, which are usually provided through export credit agencies, and this is one of the issues being addressed today during negotiations with the Swedish side.
“We are talking about billions of dollars, but the main focus should be on the private sector. Our task is to create conditions that make it profitable for companies to come to Ukraine. We have very qualified people and a large set of mineral resources. We have all the conditions to carry out full-fledged rising of production from Southeast Asian countries to Ukraine. Two main factors remain: security (victory in the war, security guarantees and further accession to NATO) and EU accession (unimpeded access to markets and financing and a set of reforms that we are currently working on). In fact, this is the formula for big projects, great recovery, and a new economy,” added Rostyslav Shurma.
The index of business activity expectations (IODA), calculated by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), after three months of being on the positive half of the scale (from 50.5 to 51.5 points) in July fell by 2 points – to a mark of 48.8 on a scale of zero to 100.
“Revision of pricing for enterprises in the electricity market, return to pre-war taxation of fuel prices, stopping the “grain corridor”, increased shelling of infrastructure facilities, as well as a significant shortage of qualified personnel adversely affected the expectations of respondents,” the central bank said.
It is indicated that industrial enterprises, after four months of optimistic assessments, expect deterioration of their economic results: the sectoral index in July amounted to 48.2 against 51.0 in June.
Respondents forecast lower volumes of new export orders, as well as worsened estimates of the volume of unfinished production (unfulfilled orders), stocks of raw materials and supplies. At the same time, a slight increase in the volume of manufactured products is expected, while the volume of new orders is forecasted at the level of the previous month.
As noted by the National Bank, the service sector enterprises retained the most restrained assessment of their economic prospects among other sectors of the economy, given the blocking of the “grain corridor,” rising fuel prices and reduced demand due to weak solvency of the population: the sector index amounted to 47.3 compared to 48.9 in June.
For the first time since April this year, respondents were negative about the volume of services provided. They also predicted a decline in the volume of new orders for services, but expected a slight increase in the volume of services in progress. The majority of the surveyed respondents are in a mood to increase prices for their own products and services due to the growth of purchase prices.
Construction companies maintained positive performance for the third month in a row, thanks to a rebound in the construction of roads, bridges, tunnels and pipelines, as well as seasonal factors: the sector index in July was 51.3, although in June it reached 58.6 points.
Builders continue to expect growth in construction output, new orders, and purchases of raw materials, albeit at a slower pace. Estimates for contractor services remained high, and their availability remained at the same level as the previous month.
Trade companies were positively assessed for the fifth month in a row due to market saturation of goods and slowing inflation, but in this sector too, expectations deteriorated to 51.6 points from 52.5 in June.
It is said that respondents continued to expect growth in the volume of goods purchased for sale, rapid growth in the cost of goods purchased for sale on the back of higher prices of suppliers, as well as lower trade margins.
As for employment, expectations improved only for trade, from 47.6 to 50.9 points. Whereas in industry they decreased from 49.3 to 48.0 points, in services – from 50.4 to 48.6 and in construction – from 54.2 to 50.0 points.
The NBU specified that the monthly survey of enterprises was conducted from July 5 to July 24. It was attended by 490 enterprises. Among the respondents, 44.9% were industrial companies, 28.2% – service companies, 22.2% – trade, 4.7% – construction; 33.7% of respondents were large enterprises, 29.0% – medium-sized enterprises, 37.3% – small enterprises.
In addition, 31.8% of surveyed enterprises carry out export and import operations, 9.0% – only export operations, 16.7% – only import operations, 42.4% – do not carry out external economic operations.
USAID will work with the U.S. Congress to invest an additional $230 million of new resources in Ukrainian businesses, particularly to help businesses comply with European Union regulations and export more goods and services to Europe, USAID Chief Samantha Power said.
“USAID will work with the U.S. Congress to invest $230 million of new resources in Ukrainian businesses. This will include everything from technical assistance to businesses that want to scale and expand, technical assistance to help them comply with EU regulations so they can export more of their products and services to Europe and create more jobs for more Ukrainians,” she said at a briefing in Kyiv on Wednesday.
At the same time, she emphasized that businesses cannot grow unless they are provided with affordable capital. Power noted that many financial institutions consider investments in Ukrainian businesses too risky.
“So we are going to expand the use of instruments such as low-interest loans or grants for businesses, first-loss guarantees that will reduce the risk of investing in Ukraine. And we’re going to work together to attract more investment and more private sector participation here in Ukraine, which again is an investment in the resilience of today and also in the economy of tomorrow,” she said.
As Power noted, this new commitment is “just one of many that the United States has made to the Ukrainian people this week.”
