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The Regions This Week
August 4, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 7
Eastern Europe
Russia will remove visa requirements for all Iranian visitors within three months, Russia’s ambassador to Iran told Tasnim News Agency. Moscow and Tehran have discussed several visa deals over recent months that would entirely and mutually remove visa entry requirements for both countries’ citizens.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning the use of Internet "anonimizers" in Russia as means of access to websites blocked by Russian watchdogs and regulators. The law was previously passed by the State Duma and the Federation council and limits the use of all means of hiding the IPN address of the user.
Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating possible tax evasion by Finance Minister Oleksandr Da- nylyuk in 1998-2016, according to the minister's statements posted on his Facebook page. Dany- liuk rejects any wrongdoing and has accused the country's law enforcement agencies of politically motivated actions.
The Pentagon and US State Department came up with plans to supply Ukraine with antitank mis- siles and other weaponry and are seeking White House approval, the Wall Street Journal reported, quoting unnamed US officials. Defence Secretary James Mattis has approved the proposals, ac- cording to the publication.
Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party is leading the polls in Ukraine with 11.2%, according to a poll conducted by two leading Kyiv think-tanks. Fatherland is a pro-EU populist party and styles itself as the real opposition. The Poroshenko Bloc, the president’s eponymous party, would earn 9.3% of those likely to vote.
After slipping in June to the lowest lev-
el 12-months, the Markit Russia Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) recovered to a six-month high in July. The seasonally adjusted Manufacturing PMI posted 52.7 in July, up from
50.3 reading in June, just above the 50.0 no- change mark.
On July 31, the ruble took the most significant plunge among emerging-market currencies
due to aggravated geopolitical risks over Russia’s expulsion of US diplomats. The ruble continued to fall for a third day in a row, losing 1.2% against the dollar to RUB60.25.
The Watcom shopping index continued to under- perform as 2017 turns out of be the worst shop- ping season in the last four years and was behind the 2016 average by 7-10% due to the bad weather in May. The index was still below the previous three years in the last month, hovering around the 480 mark, but fell in weeks 28 and 29 to 465 and 463 respectively. That is well below the previous high of just under 500 for the same weeks in 2014 and 481 for the 29th week last year.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) left its key policy rate unchanged at 12.5% due to the need to mitigate inflation risks in order to achieve infla- tion targets.
Ukraine put in a strong budget performance in the first half of the year despite the narrower June cash surplus, and turned in a consolidated budget surplus of $2bn in the period, partly because state gas holding Naftogaz Ukrainy went into profit for the first time in five years. Ukraine’s consolidated budg- et ran a cash surplus of UAH1.7bn ($0.1bn) in June, down from UAH12bn ($0.4bn) in May, which brought the positive balance in the January-June period to UAH52bn ($2.0bn), up from a deficit of UAH11bn ($0.5bn) in the year-earlier period.
The Belarusian government is looking to grow GDP by 1.7% in 2017 following a 2.6% decline recorded in the previous year, Economy Minister Vladimir Zinovsky told journalists. According to official data, the GDP of Belarus increased by 1% y/y in January-June following 0.9% y/y growth in January-May.