Ministries and civil society groups have signed a new agreement on tackling money laundering and corruption, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has stated. A number of Ukraine’s public bodies and NGOs signed on to the three-year cooperation agreement on developing new tools for verifying the ultimate beneficiaries of companies in order to better combat corruption, money laundering, fraud, tax evasion and other crimes. The NBU, the Justice Ministry, the Digital Transformation Ministry, the State Financial Monitoring Service and National Information Systems have all signed up on behalf of the state, the NBU said. Tax base erosion and profit shifting cost Ukraine up to $50 billion per year.
Ukraine is in talks with several “large investors” who could start electric car manufacturing in the country, a top official told Interfax-Ukraine. The arrival of a large investor for the manufacturing of electric cars in Ukraine would likely trigger a pivot away from tax benefits on imported electric cars, according to Deputy Energy Minister Oleksiy Riabchyn. “An investor – who intends to build an electric car factory and create here… Ukrainian electric cars – is arriving. Then we need to cancel import-stimulating measures – zero excise tax and zero VAT – and stimulate the national producer,” he said on Feb. 25.
Ukraine’s tech sector continues its meteoric ascent. According to data from the NBU, the industry’s exports grew by 30.2% to $4.17 billion in 2019, slightly faster than in 2018, when IT exports grew by 28% to $3.2 billion.
IT Ukraine Association notes that tech exports now dwarf even Ukraine’s wheat exports, which amounted to $3.65 billion last year. The increase in exports and sales in the IT sector means that, in 2019, taxes and fees from the industry into the state budget reached Hr 16.7 billion (about $680 million), compared to Hr 13 billion in 2018. Ukraine’s IT industry is the fastest-growing sector of the economy.
21 Ukrainian firms are included among the world’s top 100 receivers of tech outsourcing, a new ranking shows. The prestigious Global Outsourcing 100 review, published on Feb. 19, compiles customer references, awards, innovation programs, and corporate social responsibility initiatives.
The Digital Transformation Ministry and the United Nations will cooperate on new IT education projects, Interfax-Ukraine reports. The ministry in charge of IT innovation and the UN in Ukraine have signed a memorandum of understanding and cooperation, in which the ministry backs new educational programs especially targeted at eastern regions of the country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has promised not to trade Crimea for peace in the Donbas. He also pledged further support for residents of the Crimean peninsula, with help from Azerbaijan and Turkey. The comments came during opening remarks at a Feb. 26 forum in Kyiv marking the sixth anniversary of Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea. Meanwhile, Russia has announced its plans for a new $1.5 billion highway from its mainland to the occupied peninsula.
Ukraine and Azerbaijani state oil company SOCAR will build an administrative center and a rest area at the Chongar checkpoint on the de-facto border with Russia-occupied Crimea. Turkey will help build homes for 500 Crimean Tatar families who were forced out of the peninsula.
Zelensky promised that ATR, currently the only Crimean Tatar television channel, won’t lose state funding and will continue to broadcast. For over two weeks, ATR has halted its news and program productions and appealed for donations from the public after the Ukrainian Treasury froze its financial aid.
On the Crimean Black Sea shelf, Ukraine has lost out on billions of cubic meters of underwater natural gas. Chornomornaftogaz – a subsidiary of the country’s state-owned energy giant Naftogaz – estimates that the volume of illegal production by Russia since Crimea’s seizure is over 10 billion cubic meters. Chornomornaftogaz CEO Svitlana Nezhnova said that in 2014–2019, Russia extracted 10.4 billion cubic meters from fields that belong to Ukraine.
Chornomornaftogaz CEO Nezhnova said that international sanctions help prevent Russia from extracting Ukrainian gas. She says that they impede the proper maintenance of illegal drilling rigs in Ukrainian waters. “Sanctions hamper them,” she said, as reported by Interfax-Ukraine. “They cannot service rigs, cannot use the helicopters that are there to deliver people.” After Russia seized Crimea in 2014, the Russia-imposed authorities there declared that the continental shelf of the peninsula now belonged to Russia.
More than ten countries have imposed a ban on Ukrainian poultry due to fears over avian flu, the country’s largest poultry producer, Myronivsky Hliboproduct, has stated. Japan, Korea, China, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova, Iraq, the Philippines, Morocco, Tunisia, Singapore, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other countries have introduced a ban on the import of poultry from Ukraine due to an outbreak of bird flu recorded in Ukraine’s Vinnytsia Oblast in January, the company has reported.
The banker and veteran politician Serhiy Tigipko is being considered for prime minister, cabinet sources have told the Kyiv Post. President Zelensky confirmed on Feb. 26 to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that he had met with Tigipko. “I am interviewing many people,” he said. Incumbent Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk denied that he is going to leave his post.
Tigipko is seen as a veteran of Ukrainian politics, but since the 1990s he has maneuvered between business, politics and public service. A number of his political and business connections are still controversial, and some Ukraine watchers have said his appointment would be detrimental: “Tigipko represents the old school way of economic thinking – not sure, when Ukraine is trying to send a message of fresh/new thinking, what kind of message this would send,” writes the London-based emerging markets analyst Timothy Ash for the Kyiv Post.
