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continues review of Ukraine’s $5b loan program, “increasing the chances” that staff-level agreement will be reached that will clear the way for the payment of the next tranche of over $2bn.
The IMF is not happy with Ukrainian backsliding on its programme commitments and the team in Kyiv is likely to set several preconditions on fight against corruption, the Constitutional Court crisis and the government’s decision to reduce domestic gas prices.
Ukraine is seeking to extend its current IMF program by 6 months to 24 months.
Facing default this July on a $1.5bn loan from China, the management of Ukraine’s State Food and Grain Corporation has denounced that the British-American manager overpaid salaries during four months when he ran the state company last winter. On Monday, State Security Service agents served Simon Cherniavsky with papers from the State Fiscal Police charging him with embezzling the hryvnia equivalent of $321,000 in salaries paid to 18 outside staffers bought in to clean up the scandal-ridden state company. Cherniavsky, who engineered the 2017-2018 $1.1bn restructuring of Mriya Agro Holding, resigned from the Grain Corporation last April, following the resignations of Prime Minister Honcharuk and Economy Minister Milovanov.
6.1.4 Budget dynamics - privatization
The State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF) plans to put PJSC United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC) at the first large privatization auctions in 2021 at the end of the first or the beginning of the second quarter with an initial price being from UAH3bn to UAH5bn, Head of the Fund Dmytro Sennychenko has said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
Whittling away at Ukraine’s state property mountain, 1,899 privatization auctions were held in 2020, yielding $107mn for the budget, Dmitro Sennychenko, executive chairman of the State Property Fund, reported on January 13. With this month’s end of the suspension of ‘big’ privatizations, the Fund expect to present to investors for sale this year the Odesa Port Plant and six regional power companies. Through the end of 2023, investors have the right to contracts drawn up under English law.
In the first six months of a government-mandated program of online leasing of state and city properties, more than 5,000 auctions have been held, Svitlana Panaiotidi, deputy economy minister, told reporters on January 11. So far, 400 government entities, included the State Property Fund, have joined the system. Although some auctions have failed, one easily understandable success stands out: an auction for 10 square meters of retail space at Boryspil Airport. Bidding for monthly rent started at $183. It ended at $2,917.
Going up for auction this year are rare earths and rare metals - tantalum, niobium, beryllium, zirconium, and scandium. These are found in the Ukrainian Shield, a 250km belt that runs 1,000 km through central Ukraine, from Rivne in the northwest to Luhansk in the southeast. Details of lots and licenses are posted on UkraineInvest Guide, the English-Ukrainian website of UkraineInvest.
44 UKRAINE Country Report February 2021 www.intellinews.com
