“Ivkoni Express”, a private railway company affiliated with the bus carrier “Union Ivkoni”, has officially received a license to operate rail passenger transport in Bulgaria. The license was granted on February 11, signed by Transport Minister Grozdan Karadzhov, according to documentation from the Executive Agency “Railway Administration”. With this license, “Ivkoni Express” becomes the third…
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has recorded a halt in the trend of decreasing interest rates on deposits and expects their further increase following the latest monetary policy decisions, the NBU Governor Andriy Pyshnyy has said. “The downward trend in deposit interest rates has stopped. Moreover, in January, we recorded a slight, but significant…
On March 4, the Finance Ministry of Ukraine raised UAH 6.7 billion to the state budget at an auction for the placement of domestic government bonds. The ministry’s press service wrote this on Facebook. The Finance Ministry offered investors hryvnia-denominated domestic government bonds: UAH 979 billion at 15.85% with a 1.4-year maturity, UAH 619 million…
At the end of February, Bulgaria’s budget recorded a deficit of 1 billion leva (500 million euros), a significant increase compared to February 2024, once one-off effects are excluded. This marks a shift from the surplus seen in January, when the treasury had a balance of 563.9 million leva under the consolidated fiscal program, which…
Swedish retail group ICA Gruppen announced on March 5 that it was selling its Rimi stores in the Baltic States to the Danish retail giant Salling Group. Denmark’s Salling Group is set to acquire Rimi stores for EUR 1.3 billion, taking ownership of 314 stores located in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. As part of the…
The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is considering financing energy and infrastructure programs in Ukraine previously managed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). This was stated by the head of JICA’s Ukraine office Hideki Matsunaga at the 5th Ukrainian-Japanese Forum organized by the New Europe Center. Matsunaga noted that USAID and JICA had…
In 2024, the budget received UAH 9.9 billion in revenues from the privatization of state-owned property. Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal announced this at a press conference on March 4. “In 2024, Ukraine achieved record results in privatization in 10 years. The total amount of proceeds for last year amounted to UAH 9.9 billion.…