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The Regions This Week
July 5, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 4
Eastern Europe
Ukraine emerged as one of the top three countries exporting agricultural products to the European Union. Between May 2018 and April 2019 Ukraine accounted for 6.3% of the EU’s agriculture imports, overtaking China. Ukraine now lies behind only the US and Brazil. Agriculture exports from Ukraine grew by 14.2% (€800mn) during the 12 months to April 2019, reaching close to €6.3bn.
Russian internet major and most valuable digital company Yandex was accused by online services Avito, Cian, Profi.ru, 2gis, and ivi of breaching anti-trust law by limiting access to the services
in Yandex search engine, Vedomosti daily reported citing the complaint by the companies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called for measures to be hammered out on curbing the list of reasons for arrests in the business field by December 1.
The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) completed the restructuring of the Financial Corporation Otkritie and sued the founder of the bank Vadim Belyaev for the RUB290bn ($4.6bn) the regulator had to invested in bailing out of the bank.
The majority of Ukrainians want to see a repre- sentative of the nation's old political elites as the new PM, according to a poll published by a sociological group Rating last week, despite enor- mous public support of newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his political party.
The external state debt of Belarus totalled $16.6bn as of June 1, down by $300mn or 1.7% from early January, according to the nation's finance ministry. Minsk borrowed $327mn abroad in January-May.
The shares of Russia's largest retailer X5 Group rallied over 22% in June on strong first-quarter results, cementing its role as the innovation leader in the industry, but the rally
has limited the 12-month upside and brought estimated Excess Return to minus 9%, BCS Global Markets argued.
Ukrzaliznytsia (Ukrainian Railway) followed the government into the international debt capital market with a $500mn Eurobond issue to high demand. This was the second time the state- owned rail monopoly tried to get a Eurobond away that it intends to use to modernise its services. Ukrzaliznytsia issued a five-year note with a yield of 8.25% Interfax Ukraine reported, citing market participants.
The Russian government wants to increase state support for using natural gas as a motor fuel, according to Russian First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. The state is proposing to increase the current support from RUB2.8bn to RUB8.8bn in 2019 and start investing RUB10bn annually in the segment in 2020-2024, making a total support of RUB58.8bn ($0.93bn).
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin is taking "a political leave of absence" amid a bitter dispute with nation's newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskiy over "tactical and strategic differences" regarding the “countering of Russian aggression".
Russian gas exports to the EU in 1H19 dropped 5.9% y/y to 95.4bcm, Vedomosti reported.
Despite that, in June, supplies to Europe improved compared with the soft winter volumes and declined just 2.1% y/y. That was driven by European gas prices declining to $120/kcm, which put pressure on the profitability of LNG supplies to the region, Kommersant reported.
Russia's Transneft oil pipeline operator fired the director of the Russian part of Druzhba pipeline Oleg Bogomolov following the ongoing disruption of clean oil supplies to refineries in Europe via Ukraine and Belarus.