Page 61 - UKRRptJan21

to remote work -- 22% partially and 78% fully.
Internet purchases by Ukrainians grew 41% in 2020, to top $7bn​, estimates a new study by EVO, an umbrella group of online companies. Last year’s growth was only 17%. “One year ago, we forecast e-commerce growth in Ukraine in 2020 at 15%, the pandemic has significantly adjusted it,” EVO reports. For next year, EVO is forecasting growth of 33%. Today, about 9% of all Ukrainian purchases are online.
Forty Belarusian tech companies and 2,000 IT workers have moved to Ukraine in the four months since protests erupted​ after Alexander Lukashenko claimed to have won the Presidential Election. The Belarusian service of Radio Svoboda reports from Kyiv on Ukraine’s effort to recruit Belarusian IT workers and companies, detailing salaries, taxes and work permits.
In one step, 100,000 small businesses have downloaded the ‘cash register in a smart phone’ app since its debut August 1, 2020 ​Getmantsev said. As a result, there have been 100mn sales receipts using this technology. The protests in the last two weeks by small businesses of the Save FOP movement, he charges, are led by people who want to abolish cash registers altogether.
9.1.8 ​Tourism sector news
Foreign tourists visiting Kyiv in 2020 fell to 300,000 — 15% of the 2mn who visited last year.​ With national tourists not filling the gap, Kyiv’s tourism industry — hotel, restaurants, nightclubs and tour operators — lost $1bn this year, estimated Maryna Radova, head of Tourism and Promotion of the Kyiv City Administration. Similarly, the hotel tourism tax revenues has fallen almost in half, to $1.2mn, she told a forum at Ukrinform, “Restoration of the Tourism Sector in Kyiv Amid a Pandemic.”
Ukrainians’ spending on foreign travel dropped in half this year, to $4.5bn ​from $8.7bn, Dmitry Sologub, a deputy governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, told reporters yesterday. “It was a significant factor in improving our current account,” he said. “Travel companies from March to June did not buy foreign currency at all, then they began to buy, but purchases remained low.” He expects foreign travel spending to rebound slowly next year, probably to $5bn.
Bolstered by fresh snow, Bukovel, Ukraine’s largest mountain resort, opens in the middle of December for skiing and snowboarding. ​“We invite you to the Ukrainian Carpathians," Bukovel director Oleksandr Shevchenko wrote on Facebook. “There is no virus here, just fresh air.” Actually, Ivano-Frankivsk region has recorded 36,434 coronavirus cases since mid-March. It is not known if ski areas will be effected by the general lockdown, forecast for late December.
9.1.9 ​Utilities sector news
61​ UKRAINE Country Report​ January 2021 ​ ​www.intellinews.com
Ukraine’s cabinet adopted on December 28 a decision to raise electricity