President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has called on international business to invest in Ukraine and presented a number of promising projects.
“We have a number of projects to which I, under my personal guarantees, the guarantees of protection, invite foreign businesses. These are energy, infrastructure, transparent land circulation,” he said at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Yalta European Strategy (YES) in Kyiv.
In particular, Zelensky presented a project on land irrigation in the southern regions of the country, an inter-university IT cluster in Kharkiv, a film production center in Kyiv, a new resort on the Black Sea coast in a completely new city, ski resorts in Slavske and Borzhava, the development of Khortytsia island, a large-scale entertainment park for guests from Eastern and Central Europe.
“This is not a complete list of reasons why we invite you to invest in Ukraine,” the president added.
ENERGY, INFRASTRUCTURE, INVEST, PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE, TOURISM
A Dubai-originated fund is studying investing over $1 bln to Ukraine through the end of 2020, Amer Kharb, the fund’s Ukraine country representative, tells UBN.
Kharb, who plans to open an office in Kyiv this fall, targets investments in infrastructure, construction, logistics, agriculture, defense and energy.
“We consider this first $1 billion seed capital in anticipation of much more investment in the future,” he said Monday in Kyiv.
“A well-governed Ukraine presents Europe’s best opportunities for growth and development”, he added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has invited Turkish businesses to invest in projects in Ukraine, including in rebuilding infrastructure in its east, Donbas.
“I am pleased to invite Turkish businesses to visit us in Ukraine. I personally act as a guarantor of your comfortable work in Ukraine. Let’s grow together,” he said at a joint press conference following talks with President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Wednesday evening.
Zelensky also said that he had invited the Turkish side to take part in rebuilding infrastructure facilities in eastern Ukraine.
“We expect the Turkish side to actively participate in an international forum for the restoration of Donbas, which we plan to hold in Mariupol this autumn,” he said.
By the end of the year, Kyiv will host the next, 8th meeting of the Ukrainian-Turkish high-level strategic council, he added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told about plans to invest at least $20 billion in infrastructure of Ukraine at the Ukrainian-Turkish business forum in Istanbul on Thursday. He also said that in the next five years, the Ukrainian economy will grow by 5-7% annually.
“Over this time, we will invest at least $20 billion in our infrastructure to repair our 24,000 km of roads, to increase the number of operating airports to 15, to develop 5 seaports, to substantially increase their capacity, to triple the capacity of our military-industrial complex,” the president said.
He also said that during this period the country will pay much attention to the development of a high-quality telecommunications sector and promised to support the lifecell mobile communications operator (the subsidiary of Turkey’s Turkcell).
“We will conduct large-scale privatization and sell hundreds of interesting objects to effective investors, create normal competitive rules in the energy markets and simplify the rules of doing business removing restrictions in the areas of labor relations and capital flow,” Zelensky said.
UDP Renewables, a part of UFuture Investment Group, has launched its new solar power plant Scythia-Solar-2 in Melitopol (Zaporizhia region).
“UFuture and UDP Renewables continue to consistently realize the economic potential of Ukraine’s southern region following our long-term energy strategy. Now, the share of renewable energy sources in our country’s energy mix is only about 3%, but together we work towards changing this ratio. Our target is more than 160 MW of total production capacity by the end of 2019,” Founder of UFuture, Vasyl Khmelnytsky, said.
Scythia-Solar-2, with a peak capacity of 33.1 MW, occupies land area of 50 ha and consists of more than 91,000 solar modules produced by JA Solar. New PV PP will generate almost 42,000 MWh per year enabling to power 13,300 households.
“Scythia-Solar-2 is a high-tech facility. It is the second phase of our largest project Scythia-Solar, which we have started implementing in 2018. We have traditionally cooperated with Ukrainian equipment manufacturers and providers of respective services worth of UAH 288.5 million. During different stages of PV PP’s construction and operation, we created 315 jobs,” Managing Partner of UDP Renewables, Sergiy Yevtushenko, emphasized.
The project attracted €21.58 million of investments. The total capacity of two phases of Scythia-Solar is 46 MW, and the total investment reached €31.68 million. The launch of Scythia-Solar-2, instead of coal-fired power plants, will prevent 51 thousand tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year. Its general contractor is a Ukrainian group of companies, KNESS, and the financial partner is Oschadbank.
UDP Renewables is an investment and development company in the Ukrainian renewable energy sector. With diversification in type of renewable power generation and geography, by 2022 UDP Renewables strives to become one of the largest producers of clean energy in Ukraine, with total capacity of more than 300 MW. UDP Renewables is a part of UFuture Investment Group, a Ukrainian private equity firm and group of companies based in Kyiv. It unites businesses and social projects of Ukrainian entrepreneur Vasyl Khmelnytsky. Throughout its 20-year history, the group has accumulated a diversified portfolio of assets that spans both traditional sectors and industries of the future, and ranges from real estate, infrastructure and manufacturing to pharmaceuticals, renewable energy and technology.
INVEST, MELITOPOL, SOLAR POWER PLANT, UDP, VASYL KHMELNYTSKY
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky at a meeting with the Mexican businessman, CEO of Principal Standard Group Peter Foyo has stated that he was ready to support establishment of cooperation between his company and Ukraine if it could help provide Ukrainian state or private enterprises with contracts.
“We are open to everything that creates new business in Ukraine and jobs for our citizens,” Zelensky said, noting that he considers any investment project important, regardless of whether it is an investment of a million or a billion.
According to the presidential press service, at a meeting with Foyo and his partner, Vice President of UTG (Ukrainian Trade Guild) Ihor Melnyk, Zelensky stressed that the state is ready to protect “any clean, real investment in Ukraine.”
The president said that, despite rather busy work schedule, he is always ready to find time for projects useful for Ukraine and sit down at the negotiating table for a substantive conversation.
Foyo, in turn, thanked for the meeting and noted that it was a great honor for him to be in Ukraine, since his wife is Ukrainian and he lives with his family in Mexico and in Ukraine.
The businessman said his specialization is telephony and telecommunications services, which is relevant in the context of development of mobile communications in Ukraine and preparations for the launch of 5G. He said the position of President Zelensky on building constructive cooperation on the principles of openness was important for him.
