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The Regions This Week
June 15, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 7
Eastern Europe
Russia continued its "pivot to the East" signing billions of dollars worth of investment deals with China and preparing for a massive trade deal at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Qingdao, China, which poignantly took place at the same time as the controversial G7 summit in Canada.
G7 leaders said they would step up sanctions against Russia if required, according to the final communique adopted at the end of the two-day G7 summit. "We reiterate our condemnation of the illegal annexation of Crimea and reaffirm our enduring support for Ukrainian sovereignty,” the G7 leaders said.
Vitaliy Trubarov, the head of Ukraine's State Property Fund, signed off on a new and ambi- tious privatisation plan that would see 22 large companies sold off, according to a post published on his Facebook page.
The recently appointed head of Russia's Audit Chamber and heavyweight Alexei Kudrin is seeking to expand his mandate to include scruti- ny of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR). The CBR spent over RUB2.6 trillion in capital injections and deposits on banking sector clean-up in 2017, and has now paused to recalibrate Russia’s regulatory framework.
The US Treasury Department (USTD) retaliated against alleged cyberattacks targeting the Ameri- can energy grid and other key infrastructure by expanding its sanctions against Russian compa- nies and individuals. The USTD designated three individuals and five entities, namely Digital Secu- rity, ERPScan, Embedi, Kvant Scientific Research Institute, and Divetechnoservices.
The US also prolonged by one year its sanctions regime against officials in Belarus who under- mine democratic processes in the country, includ- ing authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Online taxi booking service Gett said it raised another $80mn for operations in Russia from Access Industries of Leonid Blavatnik, Baring Vostok, MCI, and Volkswagen Group among the in- vestors. Previously at the end of 2016 Gett raised $100mn in venture financing from Russia's larg- est bank Sberbank to start the expansion in Rus- sian cities with a population of more than 1mn.
The National Bank of Belarus gave the go-ahead for a representative office of the China Develop- ment Bank to open in Minsk, the regulator said.
Crops in Russia and Ukraine were hurt by hot dry weather that may reduce the harvest this year. Drought has afflicted the southern Rus- sian regions and Ukraine. Russia collected a record-high harvest of 134mn tonnes in 2017 and previous estimates said Russia was on track for 116.9mn tonnes this year, but the harvest could fall as low as 100mn.
Russia's largest oil company Rosneft will not lose contracts with troubled private Chinese energy major CEFC, which cancelled the acquisi- tion of 14.16% in the company for $9.1bn earlier this year. A trading deal to acquire 10mn tonnes of crude oil annually from Rosneft for five years stands and will be sold.
Ukraine's external exports swelled by 19.6% y/y in April on the back of booming metals exports that surged 65.8% y/y to $1bn – the sector’s best result since August 2014.
Chinese carmaker Zotye International Automo- bile Trading signed a $560mn agreement to set up production of 30,000 Zotye electric cars in Belarus with the Belarusian-British joint venture Unison by 2022 with a high degree of localisation. The cars will then be sold exclusively in the Com- monwealth of Independent States.