Sweden’s IKEA, the largest furniture and household goods retailer in the world, has officially announced the opening of a first store in Ukraine in the city store format in the shopping and entertainment center Ocean Mall in 2019. “The company will open its first store of the new city format in Kyiv in 2019. It will be one of the first IKEA city stores in the world… along with France, the U.K., Denmark, the United States and China. The store in Kyiv will be located in the shopping and entertainment center Ocean Mall,” the press service of the company said.
According to the announcement, the new format of the stores is smaller in size and located in the central part of the city to satisfy the demands of modern consumers who want to make purchases closer to home, as well as online.
“Taking into account the results of the market and consumer preferences study, our team has chosen the most favorable business model, which will enable IKEA to implement plans in Kyiv in the near future. In the new store of the city format, our buyers will get acquainted with the new IKEA approach to creating a comfortable life for as more people as possible,” IKEA Southeast Europe CEO Stefan Vanoverbeke said.
As reported, the report of the Swedish retailer for 2017 says that the company is testing a new city store format, one with a smaller area and closer to the city.
As was announced earlier, IKEA plans to open stores with an area of up to 5,000 square meters in Warsaw’s Blue City shopping and entertainment mall (Poland) and in the center of Paris (France). They will stock a smaller assortment of goods, with emphasis shifted to online commerce services.
In December 2017, IKEA announced plans to open the first facility in Kyiv within two years.
According to the press service, the development of the network in Ukraine will be under the aegis of IKEA Southeast Europe, which is part of the IKEA Group (Ingka Holding B.V.). The company is engaged in retail business IKEA in Croatia, Serbia, Romania and Slovenia. Swedish IKEA is one of the world’s largest retail chains for furniture and household goods. The owners of the IKEA Group are Ingka Holding B.V. and structures under its control.
Municipal enterprise Kyiv Metropoliten, which ordered the contraction of the subway line running to the Vynohradar residential area in Kyiv, has announced the repeated tender. According to the information in the ProZorro e-procurement system, the expected cost of works is UAH 5.994 billion. Bids can be submitted before October 11 inclusively. The bids will be opened on November 16. The bid security is UAH 1 million (at the previous tender it was UAH 29.9 million). The minimum decrement is 0.5% (UAH 29.9 million).
In addition, during the new tender the only criterion for selecting the winner is the price, while at the previous tender the term of work delivery was taken into account by 25%.
As reported, on September 5, 2018, Kyiv Metropoliten cancelled a tender for constructing a new subway line to the Vynohradar residential area. One of the bidders, PJSC Kyivmetrobud failed to provide a bank guarantee in time for participating in the auction. Kyiv Metropoliten rejected the offer of another participant, LLC Adamant Construction Company (Adamant), citing the company’s failure to provide reliable tender documents. Adamant filed a complaint with the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine leading to the cancellation of the auction.
Kyiv Metropoliten in January 2018 announced a tender to build the Syretsko-Pecherska subway line from the Syrets station to the Vynohradar residential in Kyiv’s Podilsky District to the tune of UAH 6.3 billion. The date of the tender was repeatedly postponed. The expected cost of work at the last auction fell to UAH 5.99 billion.
Kyiv City State Administration approved the subway line construction blueprints in July 2018.
The new section of the subway line will consist of two stations – Mostytska and Prospekt Pravdy, as well as a section in the direction to the Vynohradar station. It is estimated that construction work will take 36 months.
The public restaurant Urban Space 500, being launched under the social franchise contract of the Urban Space 100 Project in Ivano-Frankivsk, will be opened in Kyiv in December and will be located at 9, Hrynchenko Street, the founder of the Teple Misto platform, businessman, restaurant-keeper (the 23 restaurants chain) Yuriy Fyliuk has said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
“Urban Space 500 is a social franchise that Teple Misto handed over to the NGO Insha Osvita. This organization began to collect social investors, selected the management company – Druzi Cafe & Bar is fully engaged in the implementation of this project. Today, they have all 500 donators. Reconstruction of the premises is under way. They are scheduled to open [the restaurant] on December 1,” Fyliuk said.
He said that the restaurant model provides for a certain number of donators (one hundred in Ivano-Frankivsk and five hundred in Kyiv), which make a one-time non-refundable contribution of $1,000. Donators become participants in a public organization, which in turn is the founder of a limited liability company that carries out operational activities.
Some 80% of the net profit of the restaurant is returned to the public organization, and its general meeting decides which city development projects to support using these funds. The remaining 20% goes to the management company.
“We received more than 250 requests from 15 countries for the replication of this experience. Today, the first franchise went to Kyiv. According to the plan, the two next cities are Kramatorsk and Poltava. There are requests from Berlin, San Francisco, other capitals of European countries, from Malaysia. It is very interesting [to realize it in] Berlin and Francisco. I think it will happen someday, but we are moving step by step. This is not easy project for it to take place. There must be a lot of factors coming together,” Fyliuk said.
Kyiv Sikorsky International Airport in August 2018 handled 358,300 passengers, which was 54.9% up on August 2017, the airport has said on its website. The number of passengers serviced on international flights totaled 350,200 people and there were 8,100 people handled on domestic flights. The number of flights in August 2018 increased by 33.2% year-over-year, 3,258 (arrivals and departures), including 2,825 international flights and 433 domestic flights, it said.
The most popular international destinations in August 2018 were Sharm El Sheikh (Egypt), Warsaw (Poland), Minsk (Belarus), Antalya (Turkey), Ankara (Turkey), Tivat (Montenegro), Batumi (Georgia); popular domestic routes were Odesa, Zaporizhia, and Lviv.
From January to August 2018, Kyiv Sikorsky International Airport increased passenger traffic by 68.9% compared to the same period of 2017, to 1.857 million passengers, including 1.8 million passengers on international flights and 57,600 passengers on the domestic routes. The number of flights in January-August 2018 increased by 37.2%, to 20,092 (arrivals and departures), according to the airport. They included 17,007 international flights and 3,085 domestic flights.
The most popular international destinations in the eight months of 2018 were Minsk (Belarus), Dubai (the UAE), Ankara (Turkey), Sharm El Sheikh (Egypt), Rome (Italy), and such domestic routes as Odesa, Zaporizhia, and Lviv.
Kyiv Sikorsky International Airport is located in the business center of the capital, seven km from the city center. It is the second largest airport in Ukraine in terms of the number of flights and passenger traffic. The airport has three terminals with a total area is 21,000 square meters. Terminal B is separate facility for business-class service, it is part of the Fixed Base Operator (FBO) system. The airport’s runway is able to handle B-737 and A-320 aircraft. In Q1 2018, the airport serviced 442,000 passengers, which is 50.4% more than in Q1 2017. Some 423,900 passengers were handled on international routes and 18,100 people on domestic ones.
The mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) led by Ron van Rooden started working in Kyiv on Thursday, the IMF representative office in Ukraine has told Interfax-Ukraine. The IMF representative office said that the mission arrived in Kyiv the day before.
As IMF Resident Representative in Ukraine Goesta Ljungman reported in the middle of August, the IMF mission will visit Kyiv during September 6-19, 2018, to discuss recent economic developments and policies.
Ljungman also said that the mission will also discuss next steps, including financial assistance from the IMF in support of policies to maintain macroeconomic stability and keep the economy on a path toward sustainable and inclusive growth.
Ukraine’s Acting Finance Minister Oksana Markarova said that Ukraine plans to discuss all current issues with the IMF and continuation of cooperation after the completion of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) in March 2019.
According to her, the successful fourth review of the IMF EFF and the receipt of the fifth tranche of $2 billion will open the way to attract financing to the national budget on preferential terms, using the World Bank’s guarantee for$ 800 million, as well as receiving macro-financial assistance from the EU for EUR 1 billion.
In turn, NBU Governor Yakiv Smolii said that approaching the prospect of receiving financing from the IMF will have a positive impact on the state of the currency market of Ukraine and will also improve the government’s ability to borrow on the international capital markets.
“The arrival of the IMF mission to Kyiv is a step towards reducing uncertainty regarding the further development of the situation in the Ukrainian economy and improving the expectations of market participants,” the head of the NBU said in the middle of August.
As reported, the four-year-EFF program worth SDR 12.348 billion (about $17.46 billion at the current forex rate) was launched in March 2015 with a first disbursement of $5 billion. It originally suggested a quarterly review of the program, the allocation of three more tranches worth SDR 1.18 billion each in 2015 and a reduction in quarterly disbursements in 2016-2018 to SDR 0.44 billion ($0.61 billion).
Under the ongoing program, Ukraine has managed to receive a second tranche worth $1.7 billion early in August 2015 with a little delay, which was followed by a long break as Ukraine had failed to meet a number of conditions, which was aggravated by the political crisis and government reshuffles.
Talks on further financing resumed after the appointment of a new Cabinet of Ministers headed by Volodymyr Groysman in April 2016. However, the IMF decided to issue a third disbursement worth $1 billion only in the middle of September 2016 and a fourth one on April 3, 2017.
Since July 2017 Ukraine has been in a complicated negotiating process with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the gas issue. The IMF insists on raising the price of gas for the population, which, according to various estimates, may range from 30% to 60% due to rising prices in international markets, while the prime minister had previously pointed out the irrationality of such a sharp increase.
A government source said that during this period Ukraine offered the IMF at least eight options of changing the formula for gas prices, based on observance of the principles agreed upon with the IMF.
The Fund’s position is quite tough, as the government last year decided to raise gas prices that allowed Ukraine to receive a tranche from the IMF, but subsequently unilaterally refused to implement it.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde on June 19, 2018 said that the implementation of the actions related to gas prices is critical to allow the completion of the pending review under Ukraine’s IMF-supported program.
She said that another action is critical: observing the upper limit for the budget deficit.
Real wages in Ukraine in July 2018 compared to July 2017 increased by 14.7%, compared to June 2018 by 1%, the State Statistics Service has reported. It said the average nominal wage of full-time employees in July 2018 compared to June 2018 rose by 0.3%, in annual terms by 24.9%, amounting to UAH 9,170, while in June it was UAH 9,141, in May UAH 8,725, in April some UAH 8,480, in March some UAH 8,382, in February some UAH 7,828, and in January UAH 7,711.
According to statistics, the largest growth in the average wage of full-time employees in July 2018 compared with July 2017 was recorded in Lviv region (by 30.4%), Ternopil (28%), Poltava (27.9%), Ivano-Frankivsk (27.2%), Zhytomyr (27.1%), Kyiv (27%), Dnipropetrovsk (26.9%), Zakarpattia (26.5%), Volyn (26.4%), Vinnytsia (25.7%), Rivne (24.9%), Odesa (24.7%), Chernihiv (24.5%), Kirovohrad (24.4%), Khmelnytsky (23.9%), Zaporizhia (23.5%), Kharkiv (22.7%), Chernivtsi (22.6%), Cherkasy (22.5%), Mykolaiv (22.4%), Sumy (21.4%) and Kherson (20.7%) regions and Kyiv city (21.2%).
Wage growth in Donetsk and Luhansk regions (excluding part of the joint forces operation) was 23.8% and 31.7% respectively.
The highest level of wages in the past month was recorded in Kyiv at UAH 13,836, the lowest one in Chernihiv region at UAH 7,168.
