Page 68 - UKRRptSept21

now the second business grain terminal on the Black Sea. Cargill said: “Neptune is meeting the growing demand for deep water port infrastructure in Ukraine by giving farmers access to new distant markets.”
In September, a $100mn, 33-silo grain handling terminal is to be completed at Odesa port, reports Ports of Ukraine news site. Partly financed by the EBRD and constructed by Brooklyn-Kiev and Louis Dreyfus Company, the Franco-Dutch food processing firm, the complex will launch Brooklyn-Kiev into the ranks of Ukraine’s top five grain handling terminals. The new terminal can store 241,000 tons at one time and will has an annual shipping capacity of 4mn tons. For comparison, Ukraine is expected to export 56mn tons of grain this year.
● Cars
Led by three state banks, a consortium of six Ukrainians banks is extending a 5-year, $376 million loan to Ukravtodor, the highway agency. “The loan rate is 4.9% per annum in foreign currency,” Eugene Metzger, chairman of Ukreximbank, said at the signing ceremony Saturday. As loan coordinator, Ukreximbank provided 45% of the financing, or $165 million. The private banks are: Taskcombank, Bank Credit Dnepr and FUIB. Last June, Ukravtodor issued its first Eurobonds -- $700 million worth of 7-year notes at 6.25%. The Zelenskiy government is spending $4.3 billion on road construction this year – about 9% of all state expenditures. Although only 1% more than last year, this year’s road budget has grown by 55% since February.
9.1.4 Construction & Real estate sector news
Kyiv is experience a residential real estate boom with prices surging on high demand. The number of apartment buildings going up around the city is not enough to meet the number of interested buyers looking for newer and bigger apartments. Amid this type of demand, combined with a lack of available apartments, prices are rising rapidly, and with no sign of slowing down.
“There is a chronic shortage of apartments” in Kyiv, according to John Suggitt, founder and managing director at the Kyiv Real Estate Recovery Fund (KRER), an investment fund.
In real estate markets in more developed parts of the world, the average available apartment space per resident is about 30 to 40 square meters. In Germany, that number is closer to 45 square meters; in Ukraine, it’s 20 square meters per person, according to Kyiv city official statistics.
And despite the economic downturn caused by the pandemic, people are looking to buy.
Yuri Pita, president of the Association of Real Estate Experts of Ukraine, says the number of people wanting to buy an apartment in Kyiv has increased by more than 20% during the last six months, and the trend is likely to continue.
It is no surprise then that Kyiv’s apartment prices have surged by 23% in the last year, according to Lun.ua, an online marketplace for real estate. If the average cost of an apartment in Kyiv was $922 per square meter in 2020, it’s
68 UKRAINE Country Report September 2021 www.intellinews.com