Page 59 - UKRRptNov18

told Reuters he hopes to offer at public tender the administration of “concessions of 3-5 airports early next year.”
With Poland-Ukraine trade growing, Poland and Ukraine have agreed to a 48% increase in cross border trucking permits for 2019 – 160,000 for each country. Poland wanted a lower number, but demand in Ukraine is intense. Last April, police arrested an official of Ukrtransbezopasnost, the state safety agency, for selling trucking permits for up to $500 a piece. The official fee for the form is $1.75.
Ukrzaliznytsia raises rates by 31-55% in hryvnia for its freight wagons in November – largely grain cars and gondola cars for coal, steel and iron pellets. Also in November, the state railroad starts a pilot program to set benchmark prices by offering 5% of its 61,000 freight wagons for rent on ProZorro.Sale.
As container trains become more popular for moving freight out of the Black Sea ports, the nation’s largest container terminal, TIS, in Odesa region, increased its cargo handling by 54% through September, year over year, the company reports. Handling 78,200 containers, TIS says growth was boosted this year by two new cranes, the arrival of Maersk container ships, and the launch of weekly container trains to Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv and Ternopil.
Construction will start next spring on Dnipro’s new airport runway,
allowing for completion in the fall, Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan promised on a visit to the city Friday. He said $35mn will be allocated to rebuild the cement runway in one construction season, allowing its use in 2020. Referring to President Poroshenko, who is running for reelection next spring, Omelyan said: “With the support of the President of Ukraine, we can do it, and Dnipropetrovsk region will finally get a quality airfield.” Of Ukraine’s five largest cities, Dnipro feels like the ugly duckling, with the lowest air traffic and shabbiest air terminal. Kharkiv businessman Alexander Yaroslavsky says he will invest in rebuilding the terminal, but only after the state makes good on its promise to fully rebuild the runway and approach aprons.
The European Investment Bank has approved a EUR 50mn loan to help Ukrzaliznytsia and Ukravtodor , the highway agency, eliminate bottlenecks in European transport networks. The goal is to improve East-West road and rail ties with the EU, and to improve road safety. The loan is part of a larger, EUR 110mn project, but the bank did not specify the other sources of finance.
9.1.4 Construction & Real estate sector news
Gulliver, Ukraine’s tallest office building, is to go up for auction on Oct. 16 by two creditor banks , Oschadbank and Ukreximbank, both state owned. The floor price for the sale is $645mn, more than triple the $200mn construction cost for the 35-story, multiuse building when it was built five years ago.
Over the last year, Kyiv prime warehouse rents increased by 27% in dollar terms as the vacancy rate dropped by more than one half, to 4.3%, from 9.5%. Pushing up rents, rental of new warehouse space in H1 grew by 43% y/y, with leases signed on 100,000 new square meters, according to a new logistics study by CBRE Ukraine. Retail and wholesale tenants accounted
59 UKRAINE Country Report November 2018 www.intellinews.com