DCH Group of Oleksandr Yaroslavsky and ZTE Corporation, a large Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer, have signed a memorandum of cooperation under the Ecopolis KhTZ project, the DCH press service has said.
The document was signed on behalf of DCH by the managing company of the Ecopolis KhTZ business park, and on behalf of ZTE – the Ukrainian division of ZTE Ukraine Corporation. The ceremony was held in a video conference format due to quarantine restrictions in Ukraine.
According to the report, ZTE became the first Ecopolis KhTZ business resident in the industrial park (industrial cluster) and the technology park (IT and R&D clusters). The promising areas of cooperation are the creation of a ZTE office, an R&D center, and a production site in the territory of Ecopolis KhTZ.
“You are the first in the development of the Ecopolis KhTZ technology cluster. I hope other Chinese companies will follow you, such as, for example, Alibaba Group,” DCH said.
In turn, the vice president of ZTE Corporation emphasized the compliance of the Ecopolis KhTZ project with his company’s strategic priorities, and the CEO of ZTE Ukraine said that ZTE is ready to offer its expertise for the implementation of Smart City digital transformation projects in Kharkiv.
Kharkiv Mayor Hennadiy Kernes, who was present at the signing ceremony, noted that the city will fully assist in the implementation of the initiative of DCH Group.
The project of the Dunaya resort in Odesa region provides for attracting private investments of $2.5 billion, replenishing the hotel rooms with 20,000 rooms and creating 25,000 jobs, Fazil Askerov, the chairman of the board of the Odesa region tourism association, has said.
“This is the Dunaya resort town. The state company Dunaya. A year-round resort with a gambling zone. It will be located on the spit (part of the spit is a dam) between Sasyk Lake and the Black Sea. More than 500 hectares, the embankment is over 10 km. More than 80 hotels, the smallest with 150 rooms, and the largest with 1,000 rooms,” he said on Facebook.
The project provides for the opening of the first hotels in 2022, Askerov said. According to the plan, the resort will receive the first million tourists in 2025, and by 2030 their number will reach 6 million annually.
“After the quarantine is over, we will definitely hold a public presentation of the project for the general public,” he wrote.
He added that the project was created on the initiative of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, the project’s architect was Serhiy Husev’s team, and one of the ideological authors was the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada’s Committee on Economic Development, Dmytro Natalukha. In addition, according to him, Mikheil Saakashvili presented the project at the parliamentary hearings in 2016.
Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers has extended a pilot project for organ transplantation for 2020.
“This will allow agreements to be concluded with all licensed institutions providing medical services,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk said on Telegram.
According to the wording of the resolution, published on the Cabinet’s website, all medical institutions that have a license to provide organ transplantation services were included in the list of participants in the pilot project.
In addition, the Cabinet authorized the use of funds to pay for a hematopoietic stem cell transplant from abroad, as well as allowed prepayment of organ transplantation services and the use of the remaining funds of 2019 in 2020.
“We are improving the transparency of procedures for treating Ukrainians abroad, we are laying down financing for such an opportunity for our people, and we are also strengthening the fight against HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in Ukraine,” he said.
The European Union has launched a project entitled “Support to Ukraine for Developing a Modern Public Health System” on December 12, the Public Health Center (PHC) reported. The project will help the government to implement public health reform in line with its obligations under the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, reads the statement on the website of the PHC.
The experts will consult the Health Ministry of Ukraine, the PHC and the regional public health centers, help to draw up laws and regulations, analyze and implement the EU practices.
According to the statement, the project is aimed at streamlining the public health system in Ukraine with the EU practices, creating a sustainable epidemiology surveillance system to control contagious and non-contagious diseases and introducing the International Health Regulations to prevent, protect against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease.
In addition, the project will provide support for reform of the blood donation service in Ukraine via the development of a modern blood safety system in line with the EU standards. The project will also help to improve the quality control system, create donor registers and unified standards for blood transfusion, promote voluntary blood donation and establish an independent competent agency in the sphere of blood safety.
The EU project “Support to Ukraine for Developing a Modern Public Health System” will be implemented from 2019 until 2022 by the GFA Consulting Group GmbH (GFA) in consortium with the National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland (THL). The budget of the project is EUR 3 million.
Canada’s Black Iron, implementing the investment project to create a new iron ore production facility in Kryvy Rih (Dnipropetrovsk region), has said that it received expressions of interest from European banks and export credit agencies to provide $250 to $300 million of debt.
The company said in a press release that Black Iron management continue to make sound progress arranging the financing for Shymanivske project construction.
Construction of phase one to produce four million tonnes per year of 68% iron content pellet feed is estimated to cost $436 million, as further detailed in Black Iron’s most recent Preliminary Economic Assessment. As is typical for financing the development of mining projects, based on discussions with potential investors and financiers, the company estimates that some $175 million (40%) will be equity and the balance around $261 million (60%) financed as debt, not including financing charges and working capital.
Black Iron CEO Matt Simpson said that strong interest from well known, highly regarded, providers of debt financing for project construction is seen.
“The indicative interest rates, grace period prior to starting repayment and loan duration in the expressions of interest received by the Company are very competitive. The recent announcement of the MOU between the Company and Ukraine’s government to transfer a critical parcel of land to the Company is an important milestone that both anchor offtake and debt investors have been waiting to see. The Company is currently negotiating binding terms for the land transfer, including the compensation amount, and expect this to conclude following a binding product sale (i.e. offtake) agreement as a portion of the funds invested by the offtake company will be used to cover the land transfer costs. Now that an MOU on land transfer has been reached, we look forward to commercial negotiations for project construction financing being accelerated,” he said.
Majority of the required equity for project construction is anticipated to come from offtake by a large trading company and/or steel mill that is interested to purchase Black Iron’s pellet feed on a long-term contract at a slight discount to market price in exchange for making both a prepayment and acquiring ownership in the Shymanivske project. Several multi-billion companies, including Glencore, as previously announced, are currently conducting due diligence to consider such an investment.
Additionally, there are two Asia based construction companies that have conducted site visits and expressed serious interest to invest up to $50 million of equity in kind in exchange for being awarded the construction contract.
From a sequence standpoint, discussions are being held simultaneously with equity and debt investors as both are ultimately required to fund project construction. It is likely the anchor equity and offtake investor will be announced first followed by completion of an updated feasibility study and environmental impact assessment upon which the debt financing can be secured to allow for construction start around the end of next year, the company said.
UFuture and BookСhef launch a joint publishing project aimed at developing of entrepreneurship in Ukraine. The goal of the partnership is to consolidate entrepreneurial expertise and successful publishing experience. This will allow to select literature according to the needs of Ukrainian business, to optimize translation, publishing, and distribution.
Books on a wide range of topics that will contribute to the development of entrepreneurial competencies, in particular, leadership and management, will be published. These books will provide the latest knowledge on various aspects of entrepreneurship, reveal case studies, stories of companies and biographies of their founders, will encourage for entrepreneurship and enhance its prestige.
“To be successful and competitive in business, to receive investments, to find reliable partners, Ukrainian entrepreneurs need to constantly obtain new knowledge. This is why #bestread will continue the list of our impact investment projects supporting small and medium entrepreneurship in Ukraine,” Vasyl Khmelnytsky, Founder of UFuture, said.
“BookChef is actively developing the non-fiction direction. We implement a large joint project with the MIM Business School where we’ve published bestsellers by Ichak Adizes, Yuval Noah Harari, success stories of companies and products. In 2019, we published the super bestseller, “Big Money. The Principles of the First,” where famous Ukrainian businessmen shared their experience,” Olexander Kirpichov, CEO of BookChef, emphasized.
“#bestread is about the books that are worth the time of entrepreneurs, the most valuable resource of modern business. We are pleased to join the collaboration with UFuture and synchronize with other business initiatives of the company,” Vadym Saveliev, Project Manager of #bestread, said.
Soon, the partners will announce the publishing plans and start working on the first books. During 2015-2019 years, Vasyl Khmelnytsky’s K.Fund has released non-fiction books as part of K.Fund Books project.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
UFuture is a holding company of Ukrainian entrepreneur Vasyl Khmelnytsky that integrates his business and impact-investment projects. The company has a diversified portfolio of assets in the fields of real estate, infrastructure, industry, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, and IT. Currently, UFuture’s assets are estimated at $550 million, and the total capitalization of the businesses it invested in is more than $1 billion. UFuture is a majority shareholder in UDP development company (specializing in large infrastructure projects), Kyiv Sikorsky International Airport (the second international airport in Ukraine by passenger traffic), national operator of outdoor advertising RTM-Ukraine, and a group of IT companies and an ecosystem of tech solutions ITernal. UFuture is a strategic investor in the pharmaceutical company Biopharma and UDP Renewables, renewable energy investment and development company. UFuture is also developing new business projects including UNIT.City innovation parks in Kyiv and Kharkiv, LvivTech.City in Lviv; Bila Tserkva industrial park and a manufacturer of modern electrotechnical systems, Plank Electrotechnic. UFuture supports social projects in the fields of education and economics, including the Kyiv International Economic Forum (KIEF), Lean Institute Ukraine, UNIT School of Business, UNIT Factory innovative IT-schools in Kyiv and Kharkiv, Secondary education institution Novopecherska School, the all-Ukrainian online platform iLearn and others.
BookChef is a publisher of bestsellers by Yuval Noah Harari, Michelle Obama, Cameron Diaz, Bill Clinton, Ichak Adizes, Liu Cixin, and other world-renowned authors. In 3 years, an ambitious startup has grown into a publishing house with a portfolio of 200+ books and a turnover of tens of millions of hryvnias. The publisher develops joint projects with UFuture, the MIM Business School, Oschadbank, Synevo international network of laboratories, and more. It selects books from world charts, recognized bestsellers, and popular novelties by promising authors. We find texts that will be useful for readers, that can be read and re-read many times, thought-provoking and helping to see things at an unusual angle. BookChef — books that shape a personality.
