Business Update: April 30 – Banks profit, police investigate illegal logging and forest fires

A survey shows that less than half of Ukrainians plan to visit shopping malls after the COVID-19 lockdown is lifted, while the other half suggested they would prefer to stay home a bit longer. Some 52% of Ukrainians polled by the NAI Ukraine consulting company said they would visit shopping and entertainment centers less once the lockdown is over because they had less money to spend and still feared contracting the virus.

Government said it allocated about $60 million from its COVID-19 relief fund to help the children of self-employed workers. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has allocated 1.655 billion hryvnias from the anti-COVID-19 fund for assistance to children of individual entrepreneurs, member of parliament Oleksiy Honcharenko said. According to his message in Telegram, as reported by Interfax, the government allocated the funds to the Social Policy Ministry of Ukraine to help children of out of work self-employed people.

Ukraine’s parliament has voted to fast-track the so-called ‘anti-Kolomoisky’ law on banks. The Rada on April 30 enacted a special procedure that will allow it to fast-track the hearing of the bank law, which has faced unprecedented obstruction from some lawmakers. The bill would outlaw the return of nationalized banks to their previous owners. It is designed to end oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky’s aggressive campaign to regain control of Privatbank, Ukraine’s largest bank, which he co-owned before it was nationalized in 2016. Passing the law is required by the International Monetary Fund for Ukraine to receive a much-needed $8-billion loan.

Ukrainian banks have increased their profits by 23.8% in the first quarter of this year. Solvent banks in Ukraine through the January-March period netted 15.974 billion hryvnias in net profit, or about $600 million, which is 23.8% more than in the same period in 2019, according to new data published on the website of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). Most of Ukraine’s solvent and profitable banks are state-owned and return the majority of their profits back to the state.

Kyivstar mobile operator has connected 496 more towns and villages to its 4G network. It has increased its 4G coverage in 11 regions of Ukraine, the company said on Thursday, as cited by Ukrainian language media outlets. At present, the 4G Kyivstar network covers over 11,000 settlements, or almost 79% of the population of Ukraine.

The State Security Service (SBU) said it revealed another massive illegal logging operation in the western Zakarpattya region, with damage estimated at about $500,000. According to the SBU press center, the government suffered losses of 14 million hryvnias as a result of the illegal forest clearance and smuggling, which is a constant problem in the mountainous region bordering Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and Romania.

The SBU said in a statement: “Law enforcers have established that the officials of state-owned enterprise (SOE) Khust Experimental Forestry and Uzhanian National Nature Park were involved in massive illegal logging in the territories of the forest fund, which were entrusted to their management. As part of the criminal proceedings during site inspections jointly with environmental experts, SBU officers found out the facts of systematic illegal logging and damage to the environmental fund.”

To further clamp down on illegal logging, the State Forest Agency said it had launched an interactive atlas showing legitimate and illegal wood processing facilities around Ukraine. Head of the agency Andriy Zablotsky wrote on his Facebook page: “We want to inform our citizens as much as possible about the legal places for processing wood, as well as identify sawmills that work illegally or use illegally logged wood.”

Police have opened multiple criminal cases over recent forest fires in the Zhytomyr region that shrouded the capital Kyiv in toxic smoke. Police officers of Zhytomyr region have opened and are investigating about a dozen criminal proceedings related to the destruction of forests or violation of the fire safety requirements, Interfax reported.

National Police Chief in Zhytomyr Serhiy Krupey stated: “We will do everything in our power to identify and punish all the persons involved in these actions.”

Ukraine should focus on trading in commodity derivatives on a dedicated platform, the results of a USAID survey have concluded. The country should pass legislation and introduce regulations that would allow investors and businesses to trade commodity derivatives in Ukraine on a dedicated platform, the USAID Financial Sector Transformation Project said in a presentation seen by Interfax. Commodity derivatives are financial instruments that can be used for trading whose values are based on the underlying commodities, such as oil, gas, metals, agricultural products and minerals.

But according to the survey 40% of manufacturers are afraid to violate the law by using such derivatives, as the legality of such trading is currently a confusing grey area for traders. USAID said that the Verkhovna Rada has registered a bill on amending certain laws on the simplification of raising investments and introduction of new financial instruments. “Almost universally, whenever a successful market is established in a developing country, trade gets concentrated across a limited number of trading platforms,” USAID observed in its report.

USAID further stated in its findings: “To alleviate these fears, it is necessary to introduce laws that are as clear and transparent as possible. In particular, these laws should clearly define derivative contracts, their turnover, requirements for the commodity derivatives exchange, and tax accounting rules. In order to bolster confidence that derivative contracts will be settled, close-out netting and settlement finality mechanisms should be implemented.”

Grain market players are ready to use derivatives, USAID stated. More than 40% of grain producers, about 75% of traders and 45% of processors have expressed their readiness to hedge risks with the help of derivatives if this market works in Ukraine, the organization said in its report. “International practice shows that hedging remains an effective risk management tool. At present, however, there is no possibility to hedge risks in Ukraine because there is no trading in futures and options on agricultural products and no transparent grain pricing,” USAID said.