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Ukraine Business News, Tuesday, September 15, 2020
- Road Trip: France’s Renault Starts Producing Automobiles at ZAZ
- US Car Imports Rebound
- Speed Cameras Cut Accidents
- Coming: Tenders for $2 billion in Toll Highways
- Ukrainians Support Spending Billions on Roads
- Motels to Follow the Pavement
France’s Groupe Renault starts manufacturing cars this fall at the Zaporozhia Automobile Plant, UkaAVTO corporation, parent of ZAZ, announced Thursday. “ZAZ underwent a large-scale modernization in order to fully comply with the international quality standards of Groupe Renault,” UkrAVTO says, without specifying investment amounts or models to be produced. Max Missana, Eurasia managing director of Groupe Renault Export, says: “Made in Ukraine will be at the same quality level as the products of other plants of the Renault Group.” In the region, Renault produces cars in Romania, Russia and Turkey.
Once Ukraine’s largest car plant, ZAZ stopped producing cars in 2018. As recently as 2008, Ukraine produced 424,000 cars. Production has almost stopped. In July, Ukraine produced 172 cars – all at the Eurocar plant in Uzhgorod. Through July, ZAZ produced 26 buses. Nikolay Evdokimenko, ZAZ board chairman, says the joint venture with Renault will create jobs and contribute to the revival of car manufacturing here.
In August, car imports were up 35% yoy, to 32,800, reports Ukravtoprom, the vehicle industry association. In contrast, imports of new cars were down 16% yoy, to 7,000. Through August, Ukraine imported 206,500 used cars, four times more than new cars.
Imports of used cars from the US are returning to a pre-crisis level of 10,000 a month, Volodymyr Kovel, co-founder of a new association to defend car importers, told Interfax-Ukraine. The association is forming in reaction to market disruption caused in February, when the Internal Affairs Ministry proposed banning imports of ‘recycling’ cars, or cars that had been in accidents. In protest, 18,000 people signed an online petition on President Zelenskiy’s website. The import and repair of lightly damaged cars from the US is expected to be a $1 billion business next year. The most popular imports from North America are: Volkswagen Jetta and Passat cars assembled in Mexico, and Ford Focus and Fusion cars.
During the first 100 days of speed cameras, accident rates in the areas with cameras have dropped by a factor of six, said Aleksey Biloshitsky, deputy head of the police patrol department. Since the first 50 cameras were installed in Kyiv City and Region starting June 1, patrol officers have issued 833,949 speeding tickets. Drivers have paid fines in 77% of the cases. Drivers who pay within 10 banking days get a 50% discount. No driver has overturned a speeding ticket in court. Cameras click on cars going 20 km over posted limits. Foreign plated cars with unpaid tickets are not allowed back in the country.
Ukraine Business News, Tuesday, September 8, 2020
- German Politicians Oppose Nord Stream II
- Kyiv Court Ruling Threatens to Unravel PrivatBank Nationalization
- Gov’t Approves Road Map for Cutting State Ownership of Banks
- Key Interest Rate to stay at 6% this Year
- One Third of Kyiv Metro Riders Stay Above Ground
Political pressure is mounting on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to freeze or drop the Russia-Germany Nord Stream II pipeline project, according to Bloomberg and The Financial Times reports from Berlin. The game changer was a report by a German military laboratory Tuesday that said Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned Aug. 20 by Novichok, the same restricted use, military-grade nerve agent used by Russian agents in Britain in 2018.
At stake is a $9.5 billion, 1,222 km, trans-Baltic pipeline designed to take gas directly from Russia to Germany. Capable of carrying 55 billion cubic meters of gas a year, this is designed to end Russia’s dependence on Ukraine’s Gas Transportation System. From 2021 to 2024, Gazprom is contracted send 40 bcm year through Ukraine, earning Ukraine about $1.5 billion a year.
With Navalny lying in an induced coma in Berlin’s Charité Hospital, a 10-minute walk from the Bundestag, the mood inside Germany’s parliament building has turned sharply against the Kremlin.
“The EU should jointly decide to stop Nord Stream,” tweeted Norbert Roettgen, Head of the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee and a candidate to head Merkel’s Christian Democratic party. “The only language that Putin understands is the language of natural gas.”
Nils Schmid, foreign policy spokesman for the SPD, a junior partner in the Merkel coalition, said: “We need to make it clear that all talk of a strategic partnership with Russia is now over.”
Christian Lindner, leader of the liberal FDP party, said: “A regime that organizes murders by poisoning is no partner for big cooperative projects — and that includes pipeline projects.”
Katrin Göring-Eckardt, leader of the Greens in parliament, said: “Nord Stream 2 is no longer something we, together with Russia, can press ahead with.”