2019 in review
Analysis published during 2019.
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St Nicholas Day 2019
The nineteenth of December, gifts under the pillow, and the twig that is threatened and never delivered.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Holodomor Remembrance Day 2019
Fifteen years of lighting a candle on the fourth Saturday of November, and a short note on why a foreigner keeps doing it.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Turkey and Ukraine: two Black Sea economies and a trade relationship with an unusual shape
The two largest economies on the Black Sea trade heavily with each other in a pattern that is genuinely complementary rather than competitive. The structure of it explains…
Trade & Investment -
Day of Ukrainian Writing and Language 2019
Fifteen years of speaking it, and a practical note for anyone arriving now and wondering whether it is worth the effort.
National Days & Anniversaries -
The one-stop administrative centre
Before the reform, obtaining a document meant visiting several offices with different opening hours. The change was not primarily technological.
Politics & Governance -
Ukraine Market Report — Q3 2019
A new parliament with a single-party majority, an anti-corruption court beginning work, and a legislative pace that produced more measures in three months than the previous three years.
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
The road machinery market, from the inside
Twenty years of importing plant into this market taught me that demand is not driven by construction volume. It is driven by budget certainty, and those are different…
Trade & Investment -
State-owned enterprises and the supervisory board experiment
Ukraine tried to fix its state companies not by selling them but by changing who governs them. The results are mixed in an instructive way.
Economy & Macro -
Knowledge Day 2019
The first of September, and a note on the twelve-year school that Ukraine decided to build.
National Days & Anniversaries -
New air routes as a leading indicator of where trade is going
Airlines commit aircraft on the basis of forecast demand, and their route decisions are among the most honest signals available about where commercial activity is expected to grow…
Trade & Investment -
Independence Day 2019: a government with no excuses left
Twenty-eight years, and for the first time since 1991 one political force holds the presidency and a single-party majority in parliament. Everything that does not get done from…
National Days & Anniversaries -
The Ukrainian wedding as a ritual sequence
A traditional wedding is not a party with customs attached. It is a sequence of defined stages, each with its own songs, roles and objects, running over several…
Folklore & Esoterica -
The insolvency code and the creditor experience
A supplier chasing an unpaid invoice does not care about the philosophy of insolvency law. They care whether the process ends, and when.
Politics & Governance -
Ukraine Market Report — Q2 2019
The electricity market opened to competition in July, replacing a single-buyer model that had governed the sector since independence.
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Ivana Kupala, 7 July 2019
A midsummer greeting, and a note on the fern flower that nobody has ever found.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Poultry as an export success
Ukraine became a significant poultry exporter to demanding markets in about fifteen years. How it was done is a template worth understanding.
Agriculture & Food -
Constitution Day, 28 June 2019
A greeting for Constitution Day, kept to the anniversary itself.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Regulatory impact assessment, and the consultations worth joining
A draft regulation is published before it binds anybody, with a window for comment. Most companies discover the rule after it applies and complain instead.
Politics & Governance -
The molfar: the Carpathian practitioner
Described in popular writing as a wizard, the molfar was in practice a specialist in a mountain community with several overlapping and fairly practical functions.
Folklore & Esoterica -
Ukrainian universities and the international student
Written as someone who studied here: the system has real strengths, real weaknesses and a large international enrolment that is worth understanding honestly.
Society & Regions -
The end of currency control as we knew it
Ukraine replaced a Soviet-era currency control regime with a modern framework, and the change is felt weekly by anyone running a treasury function.
Economy & Macro -
The language law, explained carefully
For a business the language law is a compliance question with a clear answer, and it is far less complicated than the political discussion around it suggests.
Politics & Governance -
Vyshyvanka Day 2019
On the third Thursday of May the office looks different, and a garment does something a logo never could.
National Days & Anniversaries -
The cheapest energy is the energy not used
Ukraine inherited some of the least efficient buildings in Europe. Fixing that is duller than building generation and worth considerably more.
Energy & Infrastructure -
Protecting a brand and a design here
Registering a trademark in Ukraine is straightforward. Everything that follows depends on decisions taken at registration, and most companies take them carelessly.
Trade & Investment -
An election that was about the system itself, and what a mandate for change can and cannot do
The 2019 result was an unusually clear verdict on the political class as a whole rather than on a policy direction. That kind of mandate creates specific opportunities…
Politics & Governance -
The farm machinery market
What Ukrainian agriculture buys, on what finance, and why the service network matters more than the purchase price.
Agriculture & Food -
Easter, 28 April 2019
An Easter greeting, and a note on the plate that goes to the neighbour.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Remittances as a macroeconomic pillar
Money sent home by Ukrainians working abroad has been one of the largest and most stable inflows into the economy, and it behaves differently from every other kind.
Economy & Macro -
Reading embroidery
Ornament is often described as a written language with a decodable meaning. Some of that is well founded and a good deal of it was invented in the…
Folklore & Esoterica -
Ukraine Market Report — Q1 2019
An election quarter with a currency that strengthened rather than weakened — an unusual combination, and the explanation lies in who was buying Ukrainian government bonds.
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Healthcare financing, rebuilt
Ukraine changed how it pays for healthcare, from funding buildings to funding treatments. That single change altered the behaviour of the entire system.
Politics & Governance -
Silo capacity and post-harvest losses
Grain lost after harvest is grain grown for nothing. Ukraine loses a meaningful share of its crop this way every year, and the fix is capital rather than…
Agriculture & Food -
Getting paid: terms, instruments and reality
The most common commercial failure in a new market is not losing a sale. It is making one and not being paid, and the instruments that prevent it…
Trade & Investment -
Milling wheat, feed wheat and the quality question
Not all wheat is the same product, and the difference between milling and feed grades is where a large amount of Ukrainian agricultural income is decided.
Agriculture & Food -
International Women's Day 2019
A greeting, and a thought about the difference between a day that celebrates and a day that acknowledges.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Paska and the Easter table
The Easter bread is tall, sweet and difficult, and it is baked in a house where nobody is allowed to slam a door while it is rising.
Folklore & Esoterica -
The Energy Community and the rulebook
Ukrainian energy market law was written to a European template years before accession was on the table. That is why the sector integrated so quickly.
EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration -
Ukraine went cashless faster than most of Europe
A market that never had chequebooks or legacy terminals adopted card and phone payment faster than markets with a longer banking history, and the reason is instructive.
Economy & Macro -
The electricity market that replaced the single buyer
For most of its independent history Ukraine had one electricity buyer, one set of administered prices, and no market. The 2019 reform replaced that with day-ahead, intraday and…
Energy & Infrastructure -
Technical barriers, and the ACAA agreement
The most valuable thing Ukraine can obtain from the European Union in trade terms is not a tariff cut. It is mutual recognition that a Ukrainian test certificate…
EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration -
The single window at the border
Before the reform, clearing a consignment meant assembling approvals from several agencies in sequence. The single window made it one submission, and that changed the character of the…
Trade & Investment -
The deposit guarantee fund and the return of trust
A banking system that lost a third of its institutions had to persuade households to put money back in. The mechanism that did it is a guarantee that…
Economy & Macro -
Butter week and the end of winter
A week of pancakes, visiting and hospitality immediately before the longest fast of the year, which is exactly why it is as excessive as it is.
Folklore & Esoterica -
Building anti-corruption institutions from nothing
Ukraine built a set of anti-corruption institutions after 2014 that did not previously exist. The interesting question is not whether they work perfectly. It is how anything with…
Politics & Governance -
Malanka and the masked new year
On the old new year, whole villages put on masks and go through the streets. It is one of the largest surviving carnival traditions in Europe and almost…
Folklore & Esoterica -
What remittances do to a household
Money sent home by people working abroad is one of the largest inflows the country receives. Where it goes inside a household is well documented and mostly unsurprising.
Society & Regions -
Ukraine Annual Review 2018: growth against a rising wage floor
A third year of growth, an IT sector that had become a top-tier export earner without any policy support, and a labour market where the binding price was…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
The land moratorium, and the market that could not form
Ukraine prohibited the sale of agricultural land for two decades. Understanding what that did explains most of what the sector looks like now.
Agriculture & Food -
What a community does with its own money
The interesting part of decentralisation is not the legal reform. It is what several hundred communities did once they controlled a budget, and how visibly the answers differed.
Politics & Governance -
Unity Day, 22 January 2019
A greeting for the day, and a note on the human chain.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Market Report — Q4 2018
An incident in the Kerch Strait in November, a period of martial law in ten regions, and a new short IMF arrangement agreed in December against an election…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
The transit pipeline and what it was worth
For thirty years Ukraine was the largest gas corridor into Europe. That position produced revenue, leverage and vulnerability in roughly equal measure.
Energy & Infrastructure -
The demographic arithmetic, stated plainly
Of every long-run variable that determines what this economy can become, population is the one that moves slowest and matters most. It deserves to be stated without either…
Society & Regions -
Christmas, 7 January 2019
A Christmas greeting, and a note on the carollers who now knock on apartment doors instead of village gates.
National Days & Anniversaries -
New Year 2019
Fifteen New Years here, and the discovery that a foreigner eventually acquires a second set of holidays without giving up the first.
National Days & Anniversaries
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