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The Regions This Week
February 23, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 9
Eastern Europe
Russian grain exports in 2017 were a close to record-breaking 50mn tonnes worth some $9bn, making Russia the world’s second biggest ex- porter after the US. Russia ceded the status of the global export leader in wheat exports to the US last year but the agriculture ministry expects that Russia will regain it this year.
Despite the first ever arrest and jailing of a sitting minister Russia fell four places to 135 out of 180 countries in the latest Transparency Interna- tional Corruption Perceptions Index. Ukraine did almost as badly, ranked at 130 place in the list.
Oleg Deripaska's Rusal is ready to play "Russian Roulette" with Vladimir Potanin's Interros over Norilsk Nickel. The shareholder agreement says either Rusal or Interros can offer a buyout of the other's shares based on its average half-year share price plus a 20% premium. The party receiving the offer can then either sell its stake or return with a counteroffer.
Ukraine’s finance ministry will seek to "fully" sell the biggest state-owned lender Privat- bank by 2022, according to Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk.
Fears of losing cash hidden abroad as part of in- dividual sanctions imposed on rich and powerful Russians by the US drove $5bn of flight capital home, according to estimates by Austrian bank Raiffeisen.
Belarus is going to borrow $1bn on international capital markets annually, the nation's First Dep- uty Finance Minister Maksim Yermolovich said. Belarus hopes to issue Eurobonds worth $600mn in the first half of 2018.
Russia’s current account surplus topped $40bn in 2017, or 2.6% of GDP; however, the 24% y/y non-oil export growth was two-thirds driven by temporary factors, including big exports of grain following a record harvest.
Privately owned airline S7 put in an order for 100 SSJ100 Russian-made “super jets” in the first large commercial order for the medium-range passenger jet.
Horizon Capital intends to invest $100mn- $200mn more in Ukraine over the next five years, according to the US-headquartered private equity fund manager’s founder and CEO Lenna Koszarny.
Inflation in Russia is seen gradually accelerating towards a central bank target of 4% in the sec- ond half of 2018, the central bank said on Febru- ary 21. In a monthly report, the central bank said inflation will pick up later this year from the 2.2% seen in January.
Russia’s VTB bank will close almost all its Ukraine offices by this summer, VTB president Andrei Kostin said. Until now, its bank office network largely has been in Eastern Ukraine: Cherkassy, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Kerson, Kriviy Rih, Mariupol and Poltava.
The unexpectedly high rate of Russia’s manufac- turing growth in January – up 2.9% after declines in the previous months – was due to temporary factors, as well as a sharp decline in the industry at the end of 2017, according to the Economic Devel- opment Ministry. In particular the leap in the mining complex was partly due to the launch of LNG pro- duction at the Yamal LNG project run by Novatek.
The Ukrainian finance ministry published its debt management programme for 2018. Total debt payments (principal and debt servicing) are seen at UAH305.9bn ($10.0bn), with UAH193.4bn in domestic payments and UAH112.6bn in external payments.
Ukraine's banking system lost $901mn in 2017,
the National Bank of Ukraine reported. Privat- Bank accounted for 94% of the losses. The central bank also reported that 14 banks closed last year, leaving 82 solvent banks.