Page 60 - UKRRptJun20

Wizz Air plans to invest $100mn to develop its new base in Lviv, ​George Michalopoulos, chief commercial officer of the Budapest-based carrier, told Ukrainian journalists on May 4. After opening on July 1 with a new Airbus A320 serving seven new routes, the base will add new aircraft in the 2020s. “We understand that the next 2-3 months will be a little fuzzy,” he said referring to the evolution of the Covid pandemic. “But our cooperation with Ukraine is not 2-3 months, we are talking about years of cooperation, and we will continue to expand our activities in this market.”
The Cabinet of Ministers decided on May 6 to cut the dividend payments of Boryspil and Lviv, both state-owned airports, from 90% to 30%. ​Of course, 30% of nothing is still nothing. While Minsk and Warsaw gradually restore international flights, we hear Ukraine’s government may not grant that privilege until September. While strangling Ukraine’s two main carriers – UIA and SkyUp – the government draws up plans to start its own state-owned airline. Only one year ago, Servant of the People swept elections with promises to privatize and to lift the dead hand of government off the economy.
SkyUp is selling tickets for flights starting June 23 ​to these countries: Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Israel, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Starting June 30, the low cost airline offers flights to Cyprus, Georgia and Greece. The airline sells tickets to those countries, based on the countries’ plans to admit foreigners. Starting June 15, Greece says it will accept foreigners from 29 countries.
● Cars
Inspired by US President Dwight Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System, launched in 1956, Ukraine’s ‘Great Construction’ program aims to repave or rebuild 24,000 km of major roads over five years​, Oleksandr Kubrakov, head of Ukravtodor, the state highway agency, writes in an Atlantic Council UkraineAlert blog. “If successful, it will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, energize the Ukrainian economy, and bring the entire country closer together,” Kubrakov writes of the program which has a $3.7bn budget this year.
Ukraine will fully restore road traffic with Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Moldova as of the third week of May​, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov reported at a Cabinet meeting. In all, 66 border crossings are to reopen. Border crossings will remain closed with Russia, which bars foreigners from entering due to Covid pandemic. Crossings are limited with Belarus, which has a far higher infection rate than Ukraine.
● Ships
Dutch reader Pieter Hagendoorn, a man who knows his barges, writes that Infrastructure Ministry calculations are too optimistic, ​saying that one tug pulling two barges down the Dnipro can move 1mn tons in four years and replace 250 trucks. He writes that one tug normally pulls two barges with a total load of 4,000 tons. If the tug is able to make 30 trips in the April-October river shipping season, that means 120,000 tons a year. One truck can carry 24 tons 100 times a year, or 2,400 tons a year, With Ukraine’s over loaded trucks, it could be 3,000 tons a year. That means that one tug pulling two barges can replace 40 trucks a year. It still is a benefit, but not the silver bullet to solve Ukraine’s banged up roads.
60​ UKRAINE Country Report​ June 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com