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The Regions This Week
March 22, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 8
Eastern Europe
Russia's leading food delivery service, internet major Mail.ru’s Delivery Club, plans to double revenues in 2019, Vedomosti daily reported citing the general director of the service Andrey Tsitsenko. The Russian food delivery market is rapidly expanding and is set for a showdown between the two biggest internet groups, namely Mail.ru and Yandex, which runs Yandex.Eda.
At the upcoming March 22 policy meeting the board of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR)
is expected to keep the key interest rate unchanged at 7.75%, although the regulator is widely expected to start cutting the rate in 2019. In the second half of 2018 sanction pressure got the CBR off the monetary easing path and it adopted a policy "better hike a little now, than much later".
More than two-thirds of the Ukrainian population say their country is going in
the “wrong direction”, a poll by the Rating Sociological Group found, reported Tass, and incumbent President Petro Poroshenko leads the disapproval polls. On average 69% of Ukrainians said the country is going in the wrong direction, while only 16% stated the opposite.
The Belarusian economy grew by 0.8% year-on- year in January and February following 0.7% y/y growth in January, according to national statistics agency Belstat. Belarus' GDP grew by 3% y/y in
2018 after a 2.4% y/y expansion in 2017 following two years of recession.
Base sector data for February pointed to im- proved economic activity in Russia, the latest data from Rosstat shows, confirming a previously published spike in industrial output for the report- ing month. As commented by bne IntelliNews, ac- celeration of industrial output in February came as a very positive surprise, given that the Bloomberg consensus forecast range was 0.8-2.3%.
Russia's St Petersburg bank said it will pay 20% of IFRS net profit in dividend, making a record- high dividend of RUB1.8bn, continuing the efforts to improve its valuation. The announcement follows publication of a 21% net profit increase year-on-year to RUB9.1bn ($141mn) in 2018.
The Ukrainian cabinet will extend a contract with CEO of the nation's state-owned natural gas monop- oly Naftogaz Andriy Kobolev for one year, Volodymyr Groysman said at a government meeting. The state- ment followed last week's proposal of the company's board to extend a contract with Kobolev for one year.
Russian oil company Lukoil is planning to expand in Azerbaijan, the company’s CEO Vagit Alekperov said, Trend reported. Specifically, Alekperov said the company was interested in participating in projects such as Umid-Babek and Absheron in Azerbaijan.