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into a residential complex that are proving popular with Ukraine’s emerging middle class.
“There will be offices, a large sports complex, public gardens, a school with 18 classrooms and a kindergarten large enough for 150 children,” the company told the local press, as cited by the Kyiv Post.
According to YouControl, an organization that monitors business data and corruption, the company was founded in 2015 and is owned by the local businessman Taras Zubyk, who also has few other construction companies and heads the Lviv Project Institute, the Kyiv Post reports. Two previous auctions this spring for the sale of another empty prison near Kyiv were unsuccessful.
Overall, the Ministry plans to sell around one third of over 100 prisons across the state, four of them in 2021.
The revenue from the sale of prisons, including the one in Lviv, will be divided into two parts — 30% will go to the state budget, and the rest will be spent on repairs in functioning prisons.
The successful online auction of Lviv Correctional Colony 48 is to be the first privatization of 35 shuttered prisons put up for sale in a program started this year. Two prison sales – one in Odesa and one in Irpin, a northern suburb of Kyiv – failed due to a lack of bidders. Justice Minister Denys Mayluska hopes the Lviv sale will generate investor interest. A separate piece of the Lviv prison colony was sold last week for $1.1mn – almost nine times the starting price. Under the program, 30% of sales proceeds go to the state budget and 70% toward rebuilding existing prisons.
6.2 Debt
Ukraine’s state and state-guaranteed debt increased 0.2% m/m to $91.5bn
as of May 31, the Finance Ministry reported on June 25. State foreign debt increased 0.2% m/m to $45.2bn, while state domestic debt inched up 0.1% m/m to $36.3bn. State-guaranteed debt increased 0.6% m/m to $10.0bln. In UAHterms, the overall state debt declined 0.7% m/m in May to UAH2,517bn, or 60.0% of Ukraine’s GDP in 2020. In the absence of new significant borrowing, the growth of state debt in May was not significant. The decline of debt in UAHterms was due to 0.9% the hryvnia’s appreciation during the month. We are likely to see insignificant growth of the state debt in June, as new borrowing at the domestic market will exceed the redemption of domestic bonds during the month.
Ukraine's foreign currency payments on public and publicly guaranteed debt will exceed $10bn over the next year, reports the National Bank of Ukraine. In addition, payments on hryvnia debt will be around $5bn in the second half of this year. With no disbursements over the last year from Ukraine’s IMF program, relief could come from a new issue of special drawing rights, a move now under discussion by the IMF. “If the issue is approved by the IMF Board of Directors, Ukraine will increase its international reserves by about $2.7bn,” Ukraine’s central bank reports on its website. “However, there is a high probability that these funds will come after the period of peak payments in September.”
40 UKRAINE Country Report July 2021 www.intellinews.com