UkraineInvest prepared a new edition of The Business Week that contains a weekly summary of important business news in Ukraine.
We offer you to acquint yourself with a selection of the most interesting news:
Energy Sector
- TIU Canada to complete a $90 million, 90 mw network of five solar power plants in southern Ukraine
By this summer, TIU Canada is to complete a $90 million, 90 mw network of five solar power plants in southern Ukraine. The first project, a 10.5 MW plant in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk, recently went on line. One more is to be built in Kherson and three more in Mykolaiv. NovoyeVremya reports that engineering is done by Helios Strategia of France and Focal Line Solar of the United States. Panels and equipment are supplied by JA Solar Holdings of China and SMA Solar Technology of Germany. TIU is owned by Refraction Asset Management, a Canadian investment company.
- TrailStone, a US energy trader, is applying for a license to trade natural gas in Ukraine, according to the website of the National Commission for Regulation of Energy and Utilities. So far, the commission has licensed about 300 energy traders, many of them foreign. The commission will consider TrailStone’s application on Tuesday.
- Clare Spottiswoode, a veteran British energy economist and manager, has been elected chair of Naftogaz’s new supervisory board. During the John Major years, from 1993 to 1998, Spottiswood directed the breakup of British Gas and Britain’s gas market liberalization. Joining Spottiswoode as international board directors are: Steve Haysom of Canada, Amos Hochstein of the US, and Bruno Lescoeur of France. Last summer, the first group of international directors quit, complaining of government resistance to free market changes. The new board, with new Ukrainian directors, has the backing of Prime Minister Groysman and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The Bank gives Naftogaz loans to purchase gas on the condition of corporate restructuring. In addition to de-monopolizing Ukraine’s gas market, the new board faces the challenge of breaking Ukrtransgaz off from Naftogaz and then splitting it into two companies — one to manage gas transit and the other to manage gas storage.
Transportation Industry
- Elon Musk’s SpaceX has chartered an Antonov Airlines AN-124-100 cargo jet to carry a 28-ton carrier rocket nose cone across the US this week, from Los Angeles to Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Known as the ‘Ruslan,’ this massive plane was the only strategic airlift jet capable of handling such oversized cargo.
- Wizz Air’s traffic in and out of Ukraine jumped 64% last year, to 685,000 passengers, the Budapest-based discount airline reports. Last year, Wizz Air restarted service to Lviv and added a second Airbus to its Kyiv Zhuliany base. This year, it launches service from Kharkiv and will base a third Airbus in Kyiv. With more destinations and more frequencies, Wizz Air aims to increase this year its Ukraine traffic by another 60%, to 1.1 million passengers.
Business
- Ukraine’s IT exports should grow by 25% this year, to $4.5 billion, the IT Ukraine Association predicts. Last year, growth was 20% to $3.6 billion, the industry group says. It says that the sector employs 116,000 specialists and pays about $600 million in taxes.
- The EU-Ukraine free trade accord may be the best model for Britain’s post Brexit relationship with the EU, writes Tony Barber, Europe Editor of the Financial Times. He cites “an excellent paper on the EU-Ukraine accord” written by Erika Szyszczak of the University of Sussex’s UK Trade Policy Observatory. Attractive to Brexiters, the EU Ukraine accord allows extensive access to the EU market, without offering a path to membership in the EU or the EU Customs Union. Ukraine’s accord calls for close defense and foreign affairs cooperation, without uncontrolled movement of people. Noting continental Europe’s move toward a closer union, Barber concludes: “To the extent that a more integrated Europe takes shape, the most comfortable place for the UK, Ukraine and Turkey may be outside the EU, but closely associated with it.”