ICU Investment Group has improved its forecast for the fall of Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP) to 5% from 5.7%, head of the group’s macroeconomic research department Serhiy Nikolaichuk has said.
“In total, the economy will contract by about 5% in 2020 (compared to 5.7% in our September forecast). This will lead to a decrease in GDP below the level of 2018, but compared to most other countries, the Ukrainian economy will demonstrate better dynamics,” he wrote on Facebook.
According to the investment group, GDP growth in Ukraine in the fourth quarter of this year and in the first quarter of the next (to the previous quarters) will be “slow and rather shaky.”
“However, the pace will still be positive,” the expert specified.
He also noted that the impetus from the “opening of the economy” after tough quarantine restrictions, which affected the decline in GDP fall in the previous quarters, has exhausted, so further growth will require other drivers.
“The new outbreak of COVID-19 continues to gain momentum, indicating that the recently introduced weekend quarantine could be replaced with tougher measures across the country,” Nikolaichuk added.
At the same time, he noted that against the background of the return of income to the “pre-epidemic trajectory,” active growth of private consumption continues, and the weakness of private investment is compensated by the ongoing projects of Big Construction.
Nikolaichuk added that ICU expects a significant fiscal impulse for the economy at the end of 2020, despite the fact that it will be lower than provided for in the law on the national budget.
ICU has invested in Augmented Pixels, a Ukrainian company that develops products in the fields of navigation, digital mapping and virtual/augmented reality, the press service of ICU said on Thursday. The amount of the investment is not disclosed.
“Augmented Pixels already has solid market experience and a promising product that solves important practical problems – this is exactly what we are looking for in companies,” Head of ICU Ventures, ICU’s venture wing, Roman Nikitov said.
According to the press release, the Augmented Pixels’ product enables autonomous navigation for robots in GPS-denied environments, as well as having features that allow to create 3D maps for navigating in unknown spaces through a smartphone or virtual/augmented reality devices (indoor navigation).
“During COVID-19 pandemic many companies fired excellent programmers. We decided to move forward more aggressively and develop new products, therefore we attracted additional funding. The whole process took less than a month – I am impressed by the professionalism and proactivity of the ICU team,” CEO of Augmented Pixels Vitaliy Honcharuk said.
According to ICU, each new success story of a Ukrainian company increases the credibility of the Ukrainian venture capital market and makes us more visible on the world map.
“This is one of our goals as a strategic investor in this region,” Nikitov said.
As reported, earlier ICU invested in the following well-known Ukrainian start-ups: Petcube, Apostera, 3DLook, Hideez and Respeecher.
The National Commission for Energy, Housing and Utilities Services Regulation (NCER) has set feed-in tariff at 15.03 eurocents per kWh for Energy Den LLC with a capacity of 17.3 MWh (Bashtansky district, Mykolaiv region).
The commission approved this decision during a meeting on August 6.
The tariff is set until January 1, 2030.
The NCER also set feed-in tariff for the first stage of SPP Ternovytsia Solar LLC with a capacity of 13 MWh (Yavorivsky district of Lviv region). Another SPP in that region, Ternovytsia Solar Plus with a capacity of 12.8 MWh, received the aforementioned tariff.
Azymut Zakhid LLC with a capacity of 9.9 MWh and Tatarbunary Solar 2 LLC with a capacity of 9.9 MWh (both in Bilhorod-Dnistrovsky district in Odesa region) received feed-in-tariffs.
The National Commission for Energy, Housing and Utilities Services Regulation (NCER) has set feed-in tariff at 15.03 eurocents per kWh for Nick Solar2 LLC with a capacity of 15.4MW and Nick Sunstar with a capacity of 13.3 MW (Bashtansky and Voznesensky districts, Mykolaiv region).
The commission approved this decision during a meeting on July 30.
The tariff is set until January 1, 2030.
NCER also set feed-in tariff for Nick Green LLC with a capacity of 9 MW and Sunstar Pryvilne with a capacity of 7.4 MW (Veselynivsky and Bashtansky districts of Mykolaiv region).
Also, Ukrspecstroy Plus LLC with a capacity of 21.669 MW received the aforementioned tariff (Dniprovsky district of Dnipropetrovsk region).
The ICU Group seeks to launch the largest unsorted solid household waste treatment plant in Ukraine in Zhytomyr using the MBT technology (mechanical, biological and thermal treatment of solid municipal waste), ICU Managing Partner Makar Paseniuk has said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
“We expect to start the plant before the end of this year. We can obviously draw some conclusions on the first results of work, only at the end of 2020. This is a very dynamic business, a large number of factors affect its work,” Paseniuk said. According to him, following the results of testing this business model, the group will be able to make a decision on its offer for potential co-investment.
Paseniuk said that for Ukraine, the MBT technology is innovative, there is no experience of its implementation in the country yet.
As reported, referring to the press service of ICU, MS Social Project LLC (Kyiv), part of the ICU Group, will invest up to EUR 10 million in construction of the largest unsegregated solid household waste treatment plant in Zhytomyr. After the implementation of this project in Zhytomyr we are considering the possibility of building this type of plants in other cities of Ukraine.
Tehnix (Croatia), which is the equipment manufacturer and developer of MBT technology was selected a contractor for the implementation of the project. Tehnix has built and commissioned more than 50 similar plants in the EU countries, in the countries where solid household waste, as well as in Ukraine, is not segregated at home.
The design capacity of the plant involves the processing of about 82,000 tonnes of solid waste per year. The depth of treatment using this technology will reach 85-95%, and its result will be the receipt of secondary raw materials, alternative refuse-derived fuel (RDF) for cement plants and compost from the organic fraction of solid waste.
