Page 64 - UKRRptMar19

sector stand out: The country is home to 185,000 tech specialists, with 16,000 graduating each year. And apart from software development, Ukrainian techies have started up their own companies. The most successful of these are Depositphotos, which has 400 employees; Gitlab, which is worth $1bn; Looksery, which was acquired for $150mn; and Grammarly, which boasts 7mn daily users. Other big names on the list include Readle, Jooble, Petcube, MacPaw and Viewdle.
Ukraine’s IT exports should double by 2025, to $8.5bn, according to a forecast prepared by App Annie, a multinational data research company. Last year, exports grew by 25% y/y, to $4.5bn, estimates the report, commissioned by Kyiv’s UNIT.City innovation park and Western NIS Enterprise Fund. Barely visible a decade ago, IT now is Ukraine’s fourth largest export – after agriculture, labour remittances, and metals. About 70% of the exports are computer outsourcing jobs performed in Ukraine for foreign companies.
Ukrposhta, the state company, plans to increase deliveries by 27%, to 28mn packages this year , Director Ihor Smilianskyi tells reporters. He says: “Today Ukrposhta delivers more parcels in a day than in all of 2016.” Last year, Ukrposhta entered into an alliance with Rozetka, Ukraine’s largest online store. After launching a mobile app, Ukrposhta delivered 6mn packages ordered online last year. To further democratize e-commerce, Ukrposhta plans to complete the computerization this spring of all post offices in towns with populations over 2,000. With the biggest commercial reach in the nation, Ukrposhta has 11,000 post offices.
9.1.8 Tourism sector news
9.1.9 Renewables sector news
9.1.10 Utilities sector news
Tourist visitors to Kyiv increased by 20% last year, to 4.9mn, Andrei Strannikov, head of the city tourism commission, tells the City Council, basing his numbers on tourism tax receipts. Of the recorded tourists, 1.9mn were foreigners and 3mn were Ukrainians. This spring and summer, foreign tourism is expected to further increase with the expansion of discount airlines flying from the EU to Kyiv.
The Rada is expected to vote in March on a bill that would replace high renewable energy feed in tariffs with energy auctions. Matteo Pattrone, the new EBRD representative in Ukraine, warns excessively high feed in tariffs have provoked some governments to retroactively change the rates, hurting EBRD financed projects. A supporter of auctions, he tells the Kyiv Post: “It’s better to have sustainable compensation regime than one that is too good to be true.” To jump start foreign investment, Ukraine adopted in 2015 some of Europe’s highest feed in tariffs for renewable energy.
The EU backs construction of the two 1,000 MW reactors. To connect with the EU grid, power lines could be built either 250 km west to Poland, or 250 km southwest to Ukraine’s Burshtyn ‘energy island’ In 1990, in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, construction stopped on the two reactors, leaving one 75% complete and the other 28% complete. Two years ago, Korea Hydro
64 UKRAINE Country Report March 2019 www.intellinews.com