Ukraine in January-September 2019 acquired nuclear fuel for a total amount of $259.132 million.
According to the State Statistics Service, in the nine months, Russian-made fuel for $158.496 million was purchased for Ukrainian nuclear power plants, while fuel worth $100.636 million was bought from Sweden.
Thus, the share of Ukrainian purchases of nuclear fuel for the indicated period from TVEL (Russia) in monetary terms amounted to 61.2%, from Westinghouse (Sweden) some 38.8%
Germany’s Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (DEG) has approved $20 million financing to Astarta agricultural holding.
“The project will help the company to secure long-term working capital financing and capital expenditure program,” the company said in a report on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE).
According to a posting on DEG’s website, the financing is long-term one, but no other details are presented.
The German corporation said that some funds will be sent to buy newest equipment and modernization of production technology to cut natural resource consumption.
DEG is a subsidiary of Germany’s KfW development bank.
Astarta is a vertically integrated agribusiness holding operating in eight regions of Ukraine. The holding includes eight sugar factories, agricultural enterprises with a land bank of 243,000 hectares and dairy farms, a biogas plant and a soybean processing complex in Poltava region.
KMZ Industries (Karlivka Machine Building Plant, Poltava region) has won a tender for the supply of elevator equipment for a farm in Romania, which will be the first integrated supply of enterprise to the country of the European Union. According to information on KMZ Industries’ website, the production of elevator equipment (silos, transport and cleaning equipment) has already begun as part of the order, which will be delivered to the customer for installation in 2.5 months. At the same time, the value of the contract was not disclosed.
The press service of the company told Interfax-Ukraine that, in addition to local firms, large international companies such as AGI, Simaga and others, participated in the tender. In addition, this will be the first supply of Ukrainian elevator equipment to the EU.
“The agreement with the Romanian farm provides for the integrated supply of equipment for storing grain for further processing on the fish feed production line. This is a small amount compared to our orders, but very significant for us. In addition, the agrarian received partial funding for this supply from European funds who put forward very serious requirements for the quality of the equipment being financed,” Oleksandr Tkachenko, the head of the export business of KMZ Industries, said.
According to him, the plant plans to expand cooperation in this region.
Moody’s Investors Service on November 22 changed the outlook on the Government of Ukraine’s ratings to positive from stable. At the same time, Ukraine’s long-term issuer and senior unsecured ratings have been affirmed at Caa1.
“The affirmation of Ukraine’s Caa1 ratings reflects its – while showing signs of improvement – significant external vulnerability,” Moody’s said.
The sizeable external debt repayments due over the coming years would – in the absence of a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme – require continued market access. At the same time, the risk of a new flare-up in geopolitical tensions continues to constrain upward movement in the credit rating at this time.
The key drivers for the change in the outlook to positive are: the rebuilding of Ukraine’s foreign exchange reserves is reducing external vulnerability in the context of large external repayments; and the improvement of Ukraine’s macroeconomic stability and the prospect for renewed reform momentum is strengthening the country’s economic resilience.
Concurrently, Moody’s has affirmed the Ca rating on the $3 billion eurobond that Ukraine sold in December 2013. The sole subscriber of the notes was the Russian government. The bond is under dispute due to the international armed conflict between the two governments.
Finally, Ukraine’s long-term foreign currency bond and deposit ceilings remain unchanged at B3 and Caa2 respectively, while the short-term foreign currency ceilings for bonds and deposits remain Not Prime (NP). The country ceilings for local currency bonds and deposits are also unchanged at B3.
The TOP Outdoor advertising operator (Kyiv) plans to cover the entire territory of Ukraine in 2020, and plans to enter the international market in 2021. “Sooner or later, we will cover the entire country and plan to move beyond its borders. This is already in 2021, and for 2020 our plan is to go out and cover the whole country,” the co-founder and CEO of TOP Outdoor, Oleksiy Ohorodnik, said in an interview with the Focus publication.
According to him, the company currently offers digital outdoor advertising in Kyiv and Odesa and is in the process of entering the markets of Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Ivano-Frankivsk and Zaporizhia.
“We will focus on cities with about one million of population or at least half million of population,” added Ohorodnik, noting the low economic feasibility of development in smaller cities.
He also said that in addition to the main direction of the operator – advertising on media facades – there are plans to develop a “city format,” as well as interactive formats that provide for interaction with the audience.
In addition, the company is working on opening a software platform for managing content and interacting with advertisers, Ohorodnik added.
Top Outdor Ukraine LLC was established in 2017. According to the unified public register of legal entities and private entrepreneurs, the founders of the company are Ostap Schotkevych (70%), Ilia Strakh (15%), Ohorodnik (10%), Viktor Osadchiy and Oleksandr Svintozelsky (2.5% each).
Ukraine and Belarus are discussing building new interstate power lines and DC links for existing power lines, the press service of the Ministry of Energy and Environment Protection said after a meeting of the Ukrainian-Belarusian group for cooperation in the fuel and energy sphere. “At the meeting, the issue of building new electric power lines between the neighboring states was discussed. It was about the line between Rivne and Brest regions (Belarus). The issue of building DC links on the existing 330 kV overhead lines between the Belarusian unified power grid and the Ukrainian unified power grid was discussed: Mozyr-Chornobyl NPP and Gomel-Chernihiv,” the press service said.
Minister of Energy and Environment Protection Oleksiy Orzhel said that cooperation between the states in the field of electricity is one of the priority issues in the energy sector.
“Electricity is among the priority issues. Next February, Belarus NPP should start working. There may be an excess of electricity in which we are interested. Although, of course, the capacity of the interstate lines for electricity exchange must be taken into account,” the press service said, citing the minister as saying.
Also during the meeting, the issue of power supply to the border areas was raised, in particular, the involvement of 0.4-110 kV interstate power transmission lines in order to ensure supplies to the border areas under contracts between Belenergo and D.Trading LLC.
