2017 in review

St Nicholas Day, 19 December 2017

A greeting for the morning of the small gift, and a note on the saint himself, who was neither Ukrainian nor a myth.

National Days & Anniversaries

Holodomor Remembrance Day, 25 November 2017

A day observed with silence and a handful of grain.

National Days & Anniversaries

Ukrainian Language Day, 9 November 2017

A greeting for the day, from someone whose children learned it faster than he did.

National Days & Anniversaries

Coming back to the international bond market

A country that has restructured its debt has to re-establish itself with investors who lost money. How that is done is a specific and repeatable process.

Economy & Macro

Ukraine Market Report — Q3 2017

The association agreement entered fully into force on 1 September, and a set of social sector reforms passed in the autumn. The reform programme reached its midpoint with…

Quarterly & Annual Reports

What actually puts a country on an investment committee's agenda

Countries are not evaluated on their merits and then ranked. They enter consideration through specific channels, and a country that does not travel through one of those channels…

Trade & Investment

Knowledge Day 2017

The first of September, and the students who could now travel to Europe without a consular appointment.

National Days & Anniversaries

Deregulation, one permit at a time

The most boring reform programme in Ukraine consisted of deleting individual permits from a list. It also did more measurable good than most of the exciting ones.

Economy & Macro

Independence Day 2017: the year the border opened

Visa-free travel to the Schengen area began in June. Twenty-six years after independence, the most tangible change in ordinary life came not from an economic reform but from…

National Days & Anniversaries

Ukraine Market Report — Q2 2017

Visa-free travel to the Schengen area took effect in June. Its economic significance was not tourism — it was what it did to labour mobility and to how…

Quarterly & Annual Reports

Ivana Kupala 2017

Midsummer, and a note on why the oldest layer of the calendar has proved the most durable.

National Days & Anniversaries

Raiding, and the registry reforms that reduced it

For years a Ukrainian company could be taken over by someone changing a line in a register. Understanding exactly how that worked explains exactly how it was stopped.

Politics & Governance

Constitution Day 2017

A short greeting, kept short on purpose, in the month Ukrainians gained the right to travel to Europe without a visa.

National Days & Anniversaries

Visa-free travel: the economics of a queue that disappeared

From 11 June, Ukrainian biometric passport holders enter the Schengen area without a visa. The tourism story is the obvious one. The trade-in-services story is bigger and almost…

EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration

The reform programme at its midpoint: sorting what worked from what was announced

Three years into a reform programme is the point at which the difference between adoption and implementation becomes measurable. Sorting the record at that stage is more informative…

Politics & Governance

Vyshyvanka Day, 18 May 2017

A greeting for the day, and a note on the shirts that come out of wardrobes rather than shops.

National Days & Anniversaries

The VAT refund register: a small change with a large effect

For years a VAT refund in Ukraine arrived when it arrived, and companies budgeted for the uncertainty. An automated public register replaced discretion with a queue, and it…

Economy & Macro

Supervision that finally supervised

Ukraine closed roughly half its banks in a few years. It was brutal, it was necessary, and it is the reason the system survived what came later.

Politics & Governance

Easter, 16 April 2017

An Easter greeting, and a note on the greeting itself, which is not a phrase but an exchange.

National Days & Anniversaries

Ukraine Market Report — Q1 2017

A trade halt with the non-controlled eastern territories, formalised in March, severed the coal and metallurgical supply chains that had survived the previous three years.

Quarterly & Annual Reports

Agent, distributor, branch or subsidiary

Four ways to sell into a market, with different costs, different control and very different legal consequences. Choosing wrongly is expensive and common.

Trade & Investment

International Women's Day 2017

A greeting, and a note on the women who actually make a foreign company function in a market it does not fully understand.

National Days & Anniversaries

How Ukraine came to lead the sunflower oil trade

A single policy decision in the late 1990s built an entire processing industry. It is the clearest example in the country of value addition working.

Agriculture & Food

Holdings, farms and households

Ukraine has three agricultures operating on the same territory, with different technology, different finance and different products.

Agriculture & Food

The bank clean-up nobody enjoyed but everybody needed

Roughly half the Ukrainian banking system was closed after 2014. It was brutal, it destroyed savings, and it is the reason a functioning banking sector exists today.

Economy & Macro

Visa-free travel and what it changed

In June 2017 Ukrainians gained the right to travel to the Schengen area without a visa. The benchmarks behind it were a reform programme, and the effect on…

EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration

Open procurement as an anti-corruption instrument

Prozorro did not make Ukrainian public procurement honest. It made it visible, and those are different claims. What visibility alone achieved is still worth understanding precisely.

Politics & Governance

Ukraine Annual Review 2016: the year the new economy took shape

The first growth since 2013, a completed banking clean-up, a trade regime switched in one day, and a recovery built on sectors that barely featured in the pre-crisis…

Quarterly & Annual Reports

The central bank that became independent

A central bank that stopped financing the budget and started targeting inflation changed how every company in the country plans a year.

Economy & Macro

The tariff schedule that nobody reads

A free trade agreement is not one decision. It is thousands of separate ones, product by product, and the interesting parts are in the annexes.

EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration

Rules of origin: the clause that decides your margin

Everyone reads the tariff rate. Fewer read the origin rule, and the origin rule is what decides whether you get the tariff rate at all. It is the…

Trade & Investment

Day of Unity, 22 January 2017

A unity day greeting, and a note on the schoolchildren who now make up most of the chain.

National Days & Anniversaries

Ukraine Market Report — Q4 2016

The country's largest bank was taken into state ownership in December. It was the final and largest act of the banking clean-up, and it removed the last systemic…

Quarterly & Annual Reports

The Ukrainian ritual year, mapped

The Ukrainian calendar of observance is not a list of holidays. It is an agricultural year with a Christian layer laid over an older one, and once you…

Folklore & Esoterica

Industrial parks: the incentive regime, and whether it works

Ukraine has a legal framework for industrial parks, a register of them, and tax and customs benefits attached. It also has a large gap between the parks that…

Trade & Investment

Christmas, 7 January 2017

A Christmas greeting on the January date, and a word about the carollers.

National Days & Anniversaries

New Year, 1 January 2017

A new year greeting, and a note on the two weeks that follow tonight.

National Days & Anniversaries