Page 54 - UKRRptSept18

tonnes in 2017. Weather conditions have favored crops sown late in the season this year and a strong maize crop may compensate for a drop in the 2018 wheat harvest, which is likely to decrease by 12-16% to 22-23mn tonnes due to poor weather. Drought during the spring and torrential rains in summer have affected Ukrainian winter crops, raising concerns on a possible decrease in the harvest and its quality. “Due to weather conditions, we will have a minus in winter crops, from rapeseed to winter wheat,” Martyniuk said.
Ukraine is Europe’s biggest honey producer and fifth largest in the world , the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze's office said on its official Facebook page on August 21. "Our country produces more than 100,000 tonnes per year, that is 6% of the world's honey [output]. Today there are about 400,000 beekeepers with 4mn beehives in Ukraine," the statement reads, Interfax news agency reported on August 20. Although Ukraine has signed off on the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) with the EU, its exports of honey to Europe are limited by honey-quotas that remain small compared to the country’s production capabilities. According to Ukrainian Agribusiness Club (UCAB), Ukraine has already used up six of its 2018 duty-free import quotas to the European Union (EU), including honey , by April. Under the terms of the DCFTA deal that Ukraine signed in 2014 as part of the Association Agreement with the EU, Kyiv can export a limited amount of listed goods to the EU duty free as a first step in integration with the EU markets. After the quotas are used up normal higher duties apply. According to the Ukrainian government, the main producers of honey are eight regions: Vinnytsia, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv, Poltava, and Kirovohrad, which account for 70% of Ukrainian honey supplied to 35 countries. "Most of the produce is exported by Ukraine to the United States, Germany, Poland, and France. In 2017, over 50,000 tonnes of honey was delivered to the EU countries alone (this includes over 5,000 tonnes within a duty-free quota)," Klympush-Tsintsadze's office said in the statement.
d9.1.7 TMT sector news
Some 85% of Ukrainians were users of smartphones as of late the first half of 2018 , which was 3% more than a year ago, the OLX announcement service has said in a press release, referring to a study by GfK. According to the research company, in the first half of 2018, 50% of Ukrainians sought information about the desired product from a mobile phone. Meanwhile, according to forecasts of the research company eMarketer, by 2021 the share of mobile purchases in the global e-commerce market will amount to 72.9% of all sales. The penetration of smartphones in their networks is the following: Kyivstar as of July 1, 2018 - almost 50%, Vodafone-Ukraine in the first half of 2018- about 60%; and lifecell - as of the end of the second quarter of 71%.
9.1.8 Tourism sector news
More than a million Ukrainians have taken advantage of the visa-free regime with the EU since the introduction of a simplified system in June 2017, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wrote on his Facebook page on July 31. Incomes are recovering and are feeding travel turnover. At the same time several million Ukrainian have travelled to neighbouring countries to find temporary work. Real wages in Ukraine grew 13.0% y/y in June, decelerating from 14.1% y/y growth in May, the State Statistics Service reported on July 27.
54 UKRAINE Country Report September 2018 www.intellinews.com