Vagif Aliyev, the founder of PrJSC Mandarin Plaza, the investor and developer of Kyiv-based Lavina shopping center, on November 20 launched the first stage of the Blokbuster Mall shopping and entertainment center in Bandery Avenue in Kyiv, investing $400 million in construction. According to an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent, only a Silpo supermarket has started working in the facility. The rest of the stores will be launched on a fan-based basis as they are ready, the founder of Nai Ukraine, the project broker, Vitaliy Boiko, said.
According to him, the cost of investments in the construction of the Blokbuster Mall shopping center was $400 million. The total area of the first stage is 200,000 square meters, the leased area is 110,000 square meters. After the launch of the second phase, which is at an early stage of construction, the total area will be 300,000 square meters, the rental area some 200,000 square meters. The facility is located on a plot of 30 hectares.
“Vagif Aliyev’s pipeline now contains projects for EUR2.9 billion (12 projects of shopping and entertainment centers). This is the second largest indicator in the world in terms of development of retail real estate. Westfield is the first developer in the world with EUR8 billion, and the third one is one of the largest European investors with EUR2.5 billion. The uniqueness is also that all Mandarin Plaza projects are located in one city – Kyiv,” Boiko said at a briefing.
Caspian Service developer (Azerbaijan) intends to invest $7 million in its first own development project in Ukraine, the BASA City residential complex of the comfort+ class in the village of Khodosivka (Kyiv-Sviatoshynsky district, Kyiv region). “BASA City is the first full-scale project of Caspian Service in Ukraine as a developer. Despite temporary difficulties due to political processes, the Ukrainian housing market is very promising. The pilot project is being implemented in the comfort+ class, since, according to our estimates, today this is the most demanded and least risky segment in residential construction,” Chingiz Kishiyev, the CEO of Caspian Service in Ukraine, told Interfax-Ukraine.
According to him, the project includes nine five- to seven-storey houses, designed for 504 apartments. The land plot is located on the lake, not far from the Manufactura outlet village. Its area is 3.5 hectares, the total construction area is 35,000 square meters. The project will be implemented in two phases. The commissioning of the first of them is planned for the first quarter of 2021.
The expert noted the plan for the long term is to enter the segment of business and premium class housing in Ukraine.
“We also intend to develop business and premium class housing, as the company has gained successful experience in implementing such projects in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and other CIS countries: we have built dozens of high-quality projects,” he stressed.
Caspian Service was founded in 2001. Its portfolio includes 71 projects in Azerbaijan, six in Kazakhstan, two in Georgia, one in Poland, eight in Ukraine. Since its foundation, the company has built and commissioned about 1.5 million square meters of facilities.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky calls on international partners to invest in the development of small towns in the country and emphasizes that the beginning of such a process has been launched in Mariupol.
“Our idea is to start the development from Mariupol. That is why the investment forum is taking place here, in eastern Ukraine. A city once liberated can become truly European,” the president said at a meeting with Vice President of the International Finance Corporation Georgina Baker, World Bank Country Director for Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine Satu Kahkonen and Regional Manager of the International Finance Corporation in Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova Jason Pellmar as part of the RE: THINK. Invest in Ukraine Forum in Mariupol, the presidential press service said.
He thanked the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation for their assistance with reform implementation. “You have seen how many bills have already been adopted. We are now starting to implement them,” the president said.
In addition, the head of state thanked the International Finance Corporation for the implementation of the transport project in Mariupol. He expressed hope that similar projects would appear in other cities of Ukraine.
Zelensky said he was ready to protect the investments and called for investing in the development of small settlements. “In particular, we need investments to build new schools, hospitals, roads and bridges,” the president said.
DEVELOPMENT, INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS, INVEST, SMALL SETTLEMENTS
Ukrainian businessman, the owner of the DCH Group, Oleksandr Yaroslavsky is ready to invest $100 million in construction of a new Donetsk airport.
“I have been thinking for a long time and have decided to give $100 million and build a new airport in Donetsk. Considering that I understand this, our company has experience in both construction and operation, I am ready to build the new airport on the site of the completely destroyed old one,” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday in Mariupol on the sidelines of the First Investment Forum.
Yaroslavsky said that the airport will become a symbol of the return of peaceful life.
The businessman said that the implementation of this project will be possible after the completion of the process of reintegration of the occupied territories of Donbas into Ukraine.
DCH Group, a Ukrainian industrial and financial group of Oleksandr Yaroslavsky, is ready to invest in the reconstruction of Dnipro International Airport.
According to the press service of Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, the project for the reconstruction of the airport was discussed by head of the regional administration Oleksandr Bondarenko and President of DCH Group Oleksandr Yaroslavsky during a meeting in Dnipro.
“A modern international airport is one of the main priorities of Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration. The reconstruction of the airport, which has long been morally and physically outdated, will give an impetus to the development of the entire region. These are new opportunities for business, medicine, tourism and the region’s economy as a whole,” Bondarenko said.
According to Yaroslavsky, DCH Group is ready to invest in Dnipro airport under public-private partnership.
He noted that the company already has experience in implementing a similar project in Kharkiv. There, the construction of the runway cost $200 million, the terminal some $107 million.
According to the president of the group, thanks to optimization and modern technologies, in Dnipro such work will be at least $100 million cheaper.
“I’ve repeatedly confirmed that I am ready to use our experience in the construction and development of Kharkiv International Airport in favor of the Dnipro community, the surrounding regions, the whole Ukraine. As soon as full funding for the construction of a runway is actually allocated and fixed in the 2020 national budget, DCH as a private investor will be able to begin work on the construction of the airport complex,” Yaroslavsky said.
The Cabinet of Ministers sets a goal of raising $50 billion of investment for GDP growth of 40% in five years in the government program, Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk has said.
“We confirm that over the next five years (and we consider this situation realistic and aiming high with this ambition) we will come to a situation when our economy will grow by 40%. To do this, we need to attract somewhere $50 billion of investment,” he said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Monday, talking about the government’s program.
As reported, the State Statistics Service in 2018 substantially revised foreign direct investment (FDI) indicators in Ukraine in the form of equity capital: if at December 31, 2017 they amounted to $39.14 billion, then at January 1, 2018 – $31.59 billion. According to the statistics, FDI growth for the first half of 2019 amounted to $0.84 billion, compared with $0.69 billion in 2018 and $0.38 billion in 2017, while before that, three years FDI were reduced – totally by $22.47 billion.
In addition, according to Honcharuk, the government sets itself the task of creating 1 million jobs.
“We must create such conditions so that it would be comfortable for people to start a business, their own business, so that foreign companies would be interested in entering the country,” the prime minister said.
The government said in the program, posted on the website of the Verkhovna Rada on Monday, that the government intends to distribute new budget revenues according to the 70/30 principle, “where 70% will be invested in economic development, 30% will be spent on social security.”
“To simplify the calculations, we proceed from the fact that 1% of inclusive economic growth gives us about UAH 15 billion of revenue to the national budget,” the government said in the document.
In the opening statement of the program, bringing of all the main roads into good condition (24,000 km), the active development of the railway and the construction of five deep-sea ports and 15 airports are listed among the main plans.
