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tons of titanium ore a year at its two plants, in Dnipropetrovsk and Zhytomyr regions. The Dnipropetrovsk mine has estimated titanium ore reserves of 27 million cubic meters.
Second attempt to sell UMMC scheduled for Oct. 29, Reuters reports. The starting price has been set at 3.7bn hryvnias - $136mn. Ukraine aims to raise about 12bn hryvnias by selling state assets in 2021 to partially finance the state budget deficit, which was approved at 5.5% of gross domestic product.
Privatization of the large-scale titanium plant falls through and serves as a lesson. According to the Kyiv Post, on August 31 the State Property Fund was due to sell United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC) — the largest titanium ore producer in Europe and the country’s most attractive asset so far — for $125mn as a starting price. Only one undisclosed bidder emerged, and the sale has had to be postponed because according to the law more than one bidder is required. It seems that the problem is not the lack of interest, but insufficient time given for investors to prepare the necessary documents. Ukraine accounts for one-fifth of all titanium ore deposits globally. The United Mining Chemical Company — a 90% export-oriented company — extracts on average 300,000 tons of titanium ore annually at its two plants, in Zhytomyr Oblast and Vilnohirsk.
The former Kyiv headquarters of Russia’s VTB Bank goes up for auction
at the start of August with a starting price of $10.4 million, reports the Deposit Guarantee Fund. Located at a prestige address – the corner of Taras Shevchenko and Pushkinska - the 8-story building has 6,000 square meters and an underground garage. Since the start of the war in 2014, the government has pushed most Russian-owned banks in Ukraine out of business.
With six major state companies scheduled for privatization auctions during the second half of this year, 75% of revenue is to come from “the sale of ‘blue chips,’ the worn-out but potentially competitive industrial giants inherited from Soviet Ukraine,” Dmytro Sennychenko, head of the State Property Fund, writes in an Atlantic Council blog. Noting that 16 companies have registered interest in the Aug. 31 auction of United Mining and Chemical Company, a major titanium miner, Sennychenko writes: “We can confirm that international investor interest in Ukraine’s privatization program is back.”
Odesavinprom, a 164-year-old, state-owned winery, goes up for auction September 14 with a starting price of $2.4mn, the State Property Fund posts on Facebook. Founded in 1857 by a French merchant, Francois Nouveau, the winery on French Boulevard now spreads over 22,000 square meters, including cellars in Odesa’s famous limestone catacombs.
6.2 Debt
Ukraine’s state and state-guaranteed debt increased 0.5% m/m to $92.96bn as of July 31, the Finance Ministry reported on August 30. State foreign debt increased 1.1% m/m to $45.5bn, while state domestic debt stayed flat at $36.8bn. State-guaranteed debt slid 0.4% m/m to $10.6bn.
In UAHterms, the overall state debt slid 0.6% m/m in July to UAH2,499bn, or
45 UKRAINE Country Report September 2021 www.intellinews.com