Page 6 - BNE_magazine_11_2019

6 I The Month That Was bne November 2019
Politics
Eastern Europe
The International Monetary
Fund (IMF) has suspended talks with Ukraine over a new support programme due to the snowballing crisis over the nation's largest state- owned lender PrivatBank, according to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU)'s first deputy governor Kateryna Rozhkova. "The discussions with the IMF for the next funding tranche are frozen, stalled because of the issue of PrivatBank," Rozhkova told Reuters
on October 11. "It is a red line for them, and for the international community."
More than 10,000 people demonstrated on Kyiv’s Maidan square on October 6 against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s decision to accept the so-called Steinmeier formula ahead
of his first Normandy Four meeting (Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany). The formula put forward by former German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in 2015 suggested the introduction of special temporary local self-government rule in some areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions during local elections in Donbas.
Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigations (SBI), one of the nation's main anti-graft agencies, has put oligarch and former MP Kostiantyn Zhevaho on the country's wanted list, the SBI's director Roman Truba told journaists on October 9. Zhevago, CEO and majority owner
of Ukraine’s largest iron ore pellet exporter Ferrexpo, is suspected of embezzling funds of the nation's bank Finance and Credit.
Southeast Europe
Romania’s parliament passed
a no-confidence motion against the government headed by Prime Minister Viorica Dancila and backed by the
Social Democratic Party (PSD)
on October 10 with 238 votes – five more than needed. Dancila was the third prime minister appointed by former PSD leader Liviu Dragnea, who is now serving a prison sentence for corruption, since early 2017 when the Socialists supported by the Alliance
of Liberals and Democrats (Alde) formed a robust ruling coalition after the December 2016 general election.
Moldova’s anti-corruption prosecutors have requested preventive arrest for 30 days for oligarch and former politician Vlad Plahotniuc and the issue of a warrant in this regard, after the former head of the Democratic Party failed to show up on October 9 when he was invited by prosecutors for hearings in connection to his involvement in
a money laundering case.
The leaders of Serbia, Albania
and North Macedonia signed
a declaration on the establishment of a Schengen-style area on October 10, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic said in a statement. Plans to set up
a “Balkan Schengen” were announced at the end of September upon Vucic’s initiative. “The document that was signed is based on four key freedoms, which are represented in the EU,
and they are flow of goods, capitals, services and people,” Vucic said.
Eurasia
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev is looking to take his country into the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), Russian Senate speaker Valentina Matviyenko said on October 2. "The Uzbek president has made
a decision and is currently working
on Uzbekistan joining the EEU," Matviyenko said during a meeting with the head of the Uzbek lower chamber of parliament, Nuriddinjon Ismailov.
Economics
Eastern Europe
Weekly inflation remained at zero in the week to October 14, for a fourth week in a row. Fruit and vegetable prices fell another 0.8% during the week, dragging the headline figure lower. Inflation since the beginning of October remained at zero and the YTD figure stayed at 2.3%.
Central Europe
Slovakia's industrial production recorded a year-on-year decline of 8.1% in August, the biggest drop since 2012, mostly due to a 9.5% decrease in industrial manufacturing, following a 2.8% increase in July, the Slovak Statistical Office (SSO) announced on October 10.
The economies of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania will see lower growth rates in 2019 and – with the exception of Latvia – in 2020, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts in its latest World Economic Outlook published on October 15. Growth in the Baltic region will easily outpace the Eurozone average, however, the IMF figures show. Lithuania is now expected
to grow the fastest this year at 3.4%,
a slowdown of just 0.1pp against 2018.
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