Page 41 - UKRRptJune18

Sumykhimprom, Acting Head of the State Property Fund (SPF) Vitaliy Trubarov has announced.
The starting price in the privatisation of Ukraine's battered Odesa Port Plant (OPP) will be cut to a tenth of previous offers , to $54mn, according to the plant's first deputy board chairman Mykola Schurikov. "The next stage of privatisation has been announced," Schurikov wrote on his Facebook page on April 30. "The documents are ready. An appraisal to establish the starting privatisation price was held." The government has been struggling to sell OPP, which should be one of the most attractive assets on the privatisation list. Schurikov emphasised that the new price is 10-times lower than the price set three years ago, when the Ukrainian government and then economy minister Aivaras Abromavicius promoted OPP as the best state-owned asset for privatisation. However, even now there are serious doubts that the government will be able to sell its 99.567% stake in OPP following December's failure to sell the stake via a second privatisation tender. Potential buyers must reckon with repaying $251mn in debt to Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash's Ostchem company, $32mn to banks and traders for previously supplied natural gas, and invest at least another $100mn in restarting the plant's operations, which will demand further large volumes of gas.
6.2 Debt
DEBT 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017E*
External debt (US$bn, 80 101.7 103.4 117.3 126.2 134.6 142.1 126.3 118.7 113.6 124.2 eop)
External debt (% of 55.8 55.3 91 86.1 77.4 77.3 79.1 96.2 130.4 121.7 126.6 ann'd GDP, eop)
FX reserves (US$bn, 32.5 31.5 26.5 34.6 31.8 24.5 20.4 7.5 12.4 11.9 15.6 eop)
FX reserves (% of 22.6 17.2 23.3 25.4 19.5 14.1 11.4 5.7 13.6 12.8 13.3 ann'd GDP, eop)
External debt / FX 2.5 3.2 3.9 3.4 4 5.5 7 17.7 9.6 9.5 8.0 reserves (x, eop)
FX reserves imports 5.6 3.9 5.9 6 4.1 2.9 2.5 1.3 3.3 3.6 3.3 cov (months)
Source: ICU
Ukraine's state debt decreased by 0.4%, or $300mn, to $77.1bn in April
due to the decline of foreign debt, the Finance Ministry reported on May 25. Domestic debt increased 0.6%, while foreign debt fell 0.7%. In UAH terms, debt dropped 1.6%, or UAH32.6bn, to UAH2tr. State debt was 68.7% of Ukraine’s 2017 GDP.
Ukraine expected to repay $27bn over next four years. Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman confirmed this in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine. The
41 UKRAINE Country Report June 2018 www.intellinews.com