The retail trade turnover of Ukraine in May 2021 grew by 22.7% compared to the same month in 2020 in comparable prices, while in April this figure was 34.3%, the State Statistics Service said on Tuesday.
According to the authority, in May, retail turnover increased 5.2% compared to April 2021.
In January-May 2021, compared to the same period in 2020, the retail trade turnover in the country also rose by 14.3%.
The largest growth in retail trade turnover of enterprises (legal entities and individual entrepreneurs) in the first five months of 2021 was recorded in Chernivtsi (by 30.7%), Ternopil (by 30.1%), Zakarpattia (by 24.5%), Khmelnytsky (by 21.1%), Lviv (19.6%), Ivano-Frankivsk and Vinnytsia (18.8%), Kyiv (17.2%), Zhytomyr (16.8%), Zaporizhia (16.5%) and Rivne (15.7%) regions.
Ukraine has become a member of the European community of national hospitality industry associations HOTREC, the press service of the State Agency for Tourism Development of Ukraine has reported.
Membership in HOTREC will allow Ukraine to integrate into the European tourism and HoReCa community, the agency said on Facebook.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Ukraine and Georgia plan to step up trade and economic cooperation and boost trade between the countries in 2021 by 25%.
“Georgia is an important trade partner for us. I am sure that despite the coronavirus pandemic, we will step up trade and economic cooperation this year. A positive trend will be an increase in trade turnover by 25%. This will be one of the main tasks of the joint Ukrainian-Georgian Commission on Economic Cooperation,” Zelensky said during a joint briefing with Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili on Wednesday in Kyiv.
According to Zelensky, “the next meeting devoted to trade and economic cooperation is scheduled for September this year.”
The Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac will supply another 5.325 million doses of Coronavac vaccine against COVID-19 to Ukraine, said chief sanitary doctor of Ukraine Ihor Kuzin.
“Today we have signed commitments on Sinovac and it is planned that another 5.325 million doses of vaccine will be purchased by Crown Agents,” he said on Wednesday during an online discussion entitled “Why Ukrainians don’t want to be vaccinated.”
Kuzin said additional supplies of Coronavac vaccine are expected in July.
“We expect that all these volumes should come to Ukraine during July,” he said.
In order to prevent the penetration of the Delta coronavirus strain, Ukraine must return tight control and PCR tests at the border for visitors from Russia, Great Britain, Turkey and Egypt, said Mykhailo Radutsky, chairman of the parliamentary committee for the nation’s health, medical care and medical insurance. “On June 17, the government relaxed the quarantine. In Ukraine, as a state of the ‘green zone,’ they canceled the norm on compulsory PCR testing for citizens entering the country. I believe that it is necessary to introduce strict control for Ukrainians who return not only from Russia, Great Britain, but from resort destinations as well – Turkey, Egypt,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
In addition, Radutsky considers it necessary to maintain the norms of the mask regime and social distance and to speed up vaccination process as much as possible.
The cost of housing in Kiev and the purchasing power of the population are growing at a commensurate pace, and the ratio of price to annual income is at the lowest level over the past 10 years, according to the Financial Stability Report of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU).
“Although the cost of housing is growing, it still remains affordable in terms of relative indicators. Prices and incomes of the population are growing commensurately. In the first quarter of 2021, purchasing activity in the housing market was almost a tenth higher than the five-year average for the first quarter,” the NBU said in the report.
According to the forecast, the growth of household incomes, the gradual recovery of mortgages and a decrease in the profitability of deposits will stimulate the growth of demand for housing. At the same time, the long-term implementation of the reform of urban planning control can reduce the number of new supply, which, in turn, affects the rise in prices: in April 2021, the growth of prices in Kiev exceeded 10% per year.
According to the NBU, in January-May 2021, Ukraine issued 213 building permits and 253 certificates for the commissioning of new apartment buildings. In addition, over the past year, only half of the permit applications have been approved.
“The average annual ratio between permits and certificates is about 3 to 4, which is a rather low indicator in comparison with the international level and may indicate a slow pace of new housing construction in the future,” the National Bank said.
