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The Regions This Week
March 16, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 7
Eastern Europe
Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, appointed Yakiv Smolii as the central bank's head, replacing Valeria Gontareva. The move fol- lowed the resignation of Gontareva, a reformer highly respected by Ukraine's donors, 11 months ago. Gontareva, who is a close business associate of President Petro Poroshenko, has led the cen- tral bank since June 2014.
It is “highly likely” that Russia was behind the attack on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, who was attacked by a “military grade” nerve agent a week ago in Salisbury, the UK Prime Minister Teressa May said in a speech on March 12. She identified the nerve agent as from a group of nerve agents known as Novichok that were developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War and as such is fairly conclusive proof that the attack originated in Russia.
Russia's agricultural watchdog Rosselkhoznad- zor is not going to ban Belarusian imports of milk, cream, whey and other dairy products, the watchdog's officials told Russian media. The move followed Belarusian promises to stop Western food from being re-exported to Russia.
The European Commission approved a new €1bn assistance programme for Ukraine to support economic stabilisation and structural reforms. “The disbursements are conditional on the imple- mentation of reform measures including the fight against corruption," the European Commission said.
The SPO of Russian children's goods retail-
er Detsky Mir has been scrapped, RNS said citing unnamed sources. The settlement between Russian oil major Rosneft and Detsky Mir's major shareholder AFK Sistema investment conglomer- ate has given Sistema better visibility on its fund- ing needs.
Another RUB57bn ($1bn) will be poured into Russia’s troubled Binbank (aka B&N Bank) by the
Central Bank of Russia to cover a capital hole. The negative capital of the bank is currently estimated at RUB37bn.
Digital online bank Touch Bank launched by Hungarian OTP Group in Russia was a flop and widened the bank’s IFRS net loss by 25% in 2017 to RUB1.6bn ($28mn). Not accounting for Touch Bank, OTP Bank earned RUB5.9bn in Russia in 2017, up by 22% year-on-year and making it the group's most profitable year in the country on the record.
Russia's current account surplus reached $20.8bn in January-February 2018, according to the data by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), making $8bn surplus in February alone after $12.8bn seen in January.
Ukrainian agribusiness group MHP said it is in talks to acquire loss-making French poultry firm Doux, which is looking for partners after previous buyouts failed to revive the export specialist.
Ukraine's troubled Odesa Port Plant (OPP), the supposed jewel in the crown of the privatisa- tions, reported UAH1.448bn ($5.5mn) in net loss in 2017 (a 61.6% year-on-year decline). In Sep- tember, the State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF) said that Kyiv intends to put OPP up for sale in the spring 2018, despite the fact that the Ukrainian government included earlier the privatisation of OPP and a number of electricity companies into the priority action plan for 2017.
Russia's natural gas giant and pipeline exports monopolist Gazprom is cutting hundreds of jobs in its trading and exports subsidiaries worldwide, concentrating the operations in St Petersburg.
The National Bank of Belarus left unchanged its key refinancing rate at 10.5% following a cut of the rate by 0.5 percentage points in February, the regulator said.