Page 61 - UKRRptDec18

10 months of 2018, the airline carried more than 1.2mn passengers on its low cost routes to/from Ukraine, which is 110% growth compared to last year and makes Wizz Air the largest low cost carrier in Ukraine," the press service of the airline reported. In 2019 Wizz Air introduced four new routes: from Kyiv to Bremen, Billund and Riga, and also from Lviv to Copenhagen, according to the press service. The airline also confirmed its intention to deploy the fourth Airbus A320 at its base in Kyiv. Wizz Air offers flights on 41 routes to 12 countries from three Ukrainian cities - Kyiv, Lviv and Kharkiv.
Landlocked Belarus could become a ‘maritime state’ with the construction of a Dnipro river port in Nizhny Zhary , in Belarus’ southernmost tip, according to Andrei Savinykh, Belarus ambassador to Turkey. Last week, Savinykh showed representatives of Turkey’s Derin Shipping & Trading Co., around Nizhny Zhary, a Gomel region village of dirt tracks and shuttered wooden cottages on the eastern edge of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Located one kilometer north of the confluence of the Pripyat and Dnipro Rivers, the international borders with Ukraine, Nizhny Zhary now is used as the last anchorage for river barges on Belarus territory. Currently 10 km from the nearest paved road, Nizhny Zhary would be transformed in the 2020s with a multi-million dollar river terminal where seaworthy river boats could be loaded with Russian oil and Belarussian potassium chloride. After Canada and Russia, Belarus is the world’s third largest producer of potassium, the primary ingredient for potash fertilizers. With an eye on developing a Nizhny Zary-Black Sea link, Nibulon, Ukraine’s largest river transport company, signed a partnership memorandum with Gomel last year.
The EBRD has signed a $150mn long term loan agreement with Ukrzaliznytsya to allow the state railroad to buy up to 6,500 gondola freight cars for moving bulk cargo, typically grain. An international tender for a first group of cars is out and first deliveries may be made next month, Yevhen Kravtsov, acting board chair of the railroad, writes on Facebook. The cars are to go to a UZ subsidiary company which will put them up for rent, establishing a rate for freight cars.
To speed Chinese goods to the EU, China plans to invest in three truck-train cargo hubs in Western Ukraine , Viktor Dovhan, deputy infrastructure minister, reports after two days of meetings in Beijing with Chinese officials, including Vice Premier Liu He. Ukrzalyznytsia wants to build European gauge track to three western rail hubs – Kovel, Lviv and Uzhgorod. For meetings about these ‘multimodal hubs,’ Chinese officials had done their homework, citing the number of containers going recently from Ukraine to Austria – 6,500.
China Railway International Group has confirmed the completion of the preliminary feasibility study for a project to build the fourth subway line in Kyiv , Deputy Head of the Kyiv City Administration Dmytro Davtyan has said.
Chernivtsi is Ukraine’s latest fast growing regional airport to attract development plans . With the draw of a UNESCO World Heritage Site – the Hapsburg-era National University – Chernivtsi is seeing its traffic grow by 50% this year, to 75,000 passengers. UIA, which has the sole scheduled flight, last year doubled the size of its aircraft on the daily route from Kyiv, to a 100-seat Embraer 100. Now, Infrastructure Minister official Yuri Gusev writes on Facebook, the government plans to work with consultants from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation to draw up a public private
61 UKRAINE Country Report December 2018 www.intellinews.com