Page 6 - bne_newspaper_February_08_2019

The Regions This Week
February 8, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 6
Eastern Europe
US-owned fast food franchise McDonald’s will boost its investment in Russia by 40% in 2019 over last year. McDonald’s is already the biggest foreign owned fast food restaurant chain in Rus- sia, having famously launched in 1990 just before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russian oligarchs declared €10bn during a capital amnesty in 2018, Russian Finance Minis- ter Anton Siluanov declared. President Vladimir Putin has proposed extending the capital amnesty for another a year as part of his campaign to “de- offshorise” Russia’s economy.
Ukraine's state-owned rail monopoly Ukrzal- iznytsia reduced the frequency of trains running to Russia "due to a steep decline in passenger traffic between the countries", the company said. According to the company, Ukrzaliznytsia handled 772,900 passengers travelling to Russia in 2018, which is a 20% year-on-year decline.
US oilfield services giant Schlumberger gave
up on its years long campaign to buy Russian oil services company Eurasia Drilling Company (EDC), Russia’s Federal Anti-monopoly Service (FAS) said. A big player in the Russian oil and gas sector, Schlumberger has long wanted to acquire EDC to boost its share of the market and deepen ties. However, the deal became something of a political football as the government was uncom- fortable with selling a company in a strategic sector.
Russia’s CDU TEK published its oil and gas pro- duction data that showed total Russian crude output was down 0.7% m/m in January, driven by the 4.9% m/m fall in crude production at Tatneft. Gazprom Neft was the only integrated oil company that kept production flat m/m, while Bashneft in- creased output by 0.6% m/m. Rosneft, Lukoil and
Surgutneftegaz reduced crude output 0.1% m/m, 0.7% m/m and 0.4% m/m, respectively.
Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko believes heads of the nation's chronically loss-making state-owned companies should be jailed. According to Lukashenko, direc- tors of such enterprises "feel perfectly well at the moment". "They failed to keep their promises, did not return money to the budget or investors, and now the budget is responsible for their debts," he added.
Ukraine's leading coal and power holding DTEK invested UAH8.4bn ($309mn) into capital expen- ditures in 2018, in line with the UAH8.4bn spent in 2017. DTEK increased investments in coal as- sets 5% year-on-year to UAH4.8bn and in power generation by about 3% y/y to UAH1.6bn, with the larger goal of increasing internal coal produc- tion and converting its power plants from burning anthracite to hard coal.
Russia’s railway cargo business got off to a good start in 2019 with an increase in railway turnover supported by the profitability of export cargos, VTB Capital said. An additional 1.7mnt was transferred in January (+1.6% y/y). Gondola rates remained high and continue to boost the revenues of freight companies.
Ukraine introduced an anti-dumping duty of 11.85% for exporters of salt from Belarus for five years, according to the nation's Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. The duty does not apply to the Belarusian state-owned salt producer Mozyrsalt, which proposed to establish minimum prices for exports to Ukraine.
A complaint about dumping was submitted to the commission by the Ukrainian company Russol-Ukraine.