2020 in review
Analysis published during 2020.
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St Nicholas Day, 19 December 2020
A greeting for a December when a great many things happened at a distance.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Holodomor Remembrance Day, 28 November 2020
A remembrance message for a year in which people could not gather, and what a candle in a window does instead.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukrainian Language Day, 9 November 2020
A language day greeting in a year when the dictation had to be written at kitchen tables.
National Days & Anniversaries -
The tax service, and the end of the informal visit
The most important change in Ukrainian tax administration is that fewer inspectors come through the door, and the ones who do were selected by a system.
Politics & Governance -
The social protection system
The shift from subsidising everybody's utility bill to paying targeted support to households that need it is one of the more consequential reforms, and one of the least…
Society & Regions -
Ukraine Market Report — Q3 2020
A recovery beginning as restrictions eased, a harvest completed normally, and a divergence between the sectors the pandemic damaged and those it accelerated that turned out to be…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
The housing stock and who owns it
Ukraine has one of the highest home ownership rates in Europe and one of the weakest housing markets. Both facts have the same cause.
Society & Regions -
The agrarian receipt: a small instrument that worked
A financing tool aimed at farms too big for a microloan and too small for a bank was introduced as a pilot and quietly became normal.
Agriculture & Food -
Knowledge Day, 1 September 2020
A first-of-September greeting for the strangest school opening I have seen here.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Independence Day 2020: a quiet anniversary and a law that took nineteen years
No parade, restricted gatherings and a pandemic recession. Also: parliament finally lifted the farmland moratorium in March, which will matter longer than anything else that happened this year.
National Days & Anniversaries -
The pension question, honestly stated
The arithmetic of a pay-as-you-go pension system with a falling contributor base has only three solutions, and all of them are unpopular.
Economy & Macro -
The road building programme, from a supplier chair
A very large road programme ran for several years. Seen from the supply side, what mattered was contracting practice, payment terms and whether the tender was real.
Energy & Infrastructure -
Ukraine Market Report — Q2 2020
A banking law adopted in May protected the 2015–2016 clean-up from reversal, and a new IMF programme followed in June. The sequence shows what conditionality can and cannot…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
The quiet dominance in honey
Ukraine is one of the largest honey exporters in the world, the industry is built on smallholders rather than corporations, and almost nobody outside the trade knows it.
Agriculture & Food -
Ivana Kupala 2020
Midsummer in a pandemic year, when the outdoor festival turned out to be the one that could still happen.
National Days & Anniversaries -
The Black Sea ports and their capacity
Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi are not interchangeable. Depth, berth length and hinterland connection decide what each can actually do.
Energy & Infrastructure -
Constitution Day 2020
A short greeting from a strange summer, when public occasions had mostly moved indoors or online.
National Days & Anniversaries -
The port concessions that worked
Two Ukrainian port terminals were transferred to private operation while remaining in state ownership. They are the clearest domestic evidence that the model can work here.
Trade & Investment -
Dairy: consolidation and quality
Ukrainian dairy has been reorganising for twenty years, moving milk production from household cows to commercial herds. The reason is a grading standard.
Agriculture & Food -
Folk medicine and the village healer
Village healing combined herbs that worked, charms that did not, and a psychological framework that mattered more than either. Separating the three is the interesting part.
Folklore & Esoterica -
Public-private partnership, and why so few happen
Ukraine has a public-private partnership law and very few completed partnerships. The gap between the two is where the interesting analysis is.
Trade & Investment -
Organic production and the European buyer
Ukraine has substantial organic production and sells most of it as an anonymous input into someone else's branded product. That is a choice, and it can be changed.
Agriculture & Food -
The coal regions and a managed transition
Closing a coal mine is an engineering task that takes two years and a social task that takes twenty. Confusing the two is how transitions fail.
Energy & Infrastructure -
Why local elections matter to a supplier
A change of mayor changes procurement priorities, permit processing and which projects continue. For a company with local contracts this is not politics; it is planning.
Politics & Governance -
Vyshyvanka Day, 21 May 2020
A greeting for a day that moved online, and what happened when there was no street to walk down.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Customs, before and after
For years the customs service was the single biggest complaint of importers in Ukraine. What changed, what did not, and what an importer should expect now.
Economy & Macro -
The education system, assessed
Ukrainian education has one outstanding structural achievement and one persistent weakness, and both matter to anyone hiring here.
Society & Regions -
Petrykivka painting
A decorative painting tradition from one village, made with a cat-hair brush and a finger, and recognised internationally as intangible heritage.
Folklore & Esoterica -
Where to argue: courts, arbitration and the clause nobody reads
The dispute resolution clause is agreed in the last ten minutes of a negotiation and decides everything if the deal goes wrong.
Trade & Investment -
Opening the land market: a twenty-year argument
The moratorium on selling farmland lasted two decades and was defended by people with a serious case. Understanding that case explains the shape of the eventual law.
Politics & Governance -
The rushnyk: the cloth that marks every threshold
A long embroidered cloth appears at every important moment of a life here: birth, marriage, welcome, burial. It is the same object used four different ways.
Folklore & Esoterica -
Administering pensions to twelve million people
The largest single line in the budget is paid out monthly to more than a fifth of the population. The administration of it is a logistics achievement nobody…
Politics & Governance -
The pandemic year: a milder contraction on a weaker base
Ukraine's 2020 downturn was shallower than 2009 or 2015, which surprised people who assumed a weak health system meant a worse economic outcome. The explanation is in the…
Economy & Macro -
Easter 2020
The Easter of empty churches. Baskets were blessed at a distance, families met on screens, and the paska was baked anyway.
National Days & Anniversaries -
The New Ukrainian School
Ukraine rewrote what a school day looks like: twelve years instead of eleven, competences instead of memorisation, and a different relationship between teacher and pupil.
Politics & Governance -
The grain terminals that were built
Between 2010 and 2021 private investors built deep-water grain handling capacity on the Black Sea coast. That capital is why the export volumes were possible.
Agriculture & Food -
Ukraine Market Report — Q1 2020
A pandemic quarantine from March, a rapid reversal of the portfolio inflows that had strengthened the currency, and a land market law passed at the end of the…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Getting grain to a ship
The gap between the farm gate price and the port price is the whole story of Ukrainian agriculture. Understanding where that money goes explains more than any yield…
Agriculture & Food -
Technical regulations and the CE mark question
Manufacturers frequently ask whether they can put a CE mark on a product made in Ukraine. The answer is more interesting than a simple yes or no.
Trade & Investment -
Harvest end and the last sheaf
The end of the harvest was marked with a wreath, a last sheaf and a delivery to the household. The sheaf then stood in the corner until Christmas.
Folklore & Esoterica -
What the IMF programmes actually asked for
The conditionality is publicly available and reads as a reform list. Most of it is what a domestic reformer would have proposed anyway, which is why it is…
Economy & Macro -
Green week and the household dressed in leaves
For one week in early summer, houses are decorated with cut branches and the floor is covered with herbs. It is one of the least Christian things in…
Folklore & Esoterica -
Kyiv as an economy in its own right
The capital accounts for a share of national output far larger than its share of population, which is normal for a capital and has consequences worth stating.
Society & Regions -
8 March 2020
A greeting to the women of Ukraine, at the start of an unusual spring.
National Days & Anniversaries -
The regional map of Ukrainian output
Ukraine is often discussed as one economy. It is more usefully understood as several, with very different structures, and the differences explain most of what happens politically and…
Society & Regions -
Diia and the disappearance of the queue
The measure of a digital government reform is not the app. It is the hours it deletes. For a company operating here, the change between 2015 and 2021…
Economy & Macro -
Vertep: the travelling puppet nativity
A two-storey wooden box carried from house to house at Christmas, with scripture performed on the upper level and something considerably less reverent on the lower.
Folklore & Esoterica -
Unbundling Naftogaz
Separating the pipeline from the company that sells gas through it sounds like an accounting change. It is the single most important structural reform in the sector.
Energy & Infrastructure -
Authorised Economic Operator status, and what it saved us
AEO status is a certification that a customs administration gives a company it has decided to trust. Getting it is tedious. Holding it changes what a border costs…
Trade & Investment -
Europe's largest gas storage, and what it can do
Ukraine holds more underground gas storage capacity than any other country in Europe. That asset is strategic, commercial and consistently underused.
Energy & Infrastructure -
Ukraine Annual Review 2019: the strongest position since 2007
Growth, inflation at target, a strong currency, record reserves, an open electricity market and a five-year transit agreement. It was the best macroeconomic year of the period, and…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Day of Unity 2020
A January day about togetherness, weeks before a year that would require everyone to stay apart.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Market Report — Q4 2019
A five-year gas transit agreement was concluded at the end of December alongside a settlement of the outstanding arbitration, removing the largest single external uncertainty going into the…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Decentralisation: the reform that changed the map
Of all the reforms of the last decade, decentralisation is the one whose effects I can see from a car window. It gave communities their own revenue and…
Politics & Governance -
Christmas, 7 January 2020
A Christmas greeting at the start of a decade, and a note on the dish that decides the evening.
National Days & Anniversaries -
The 2019 transit deal: what European rules actually bought Ukraine
Signed with hours to spare on 30 December: five years, firm booked capacity, European network rules, and the settlement of arbitration claims. The structure matters more than the…
Energy & Infrastructure -
New Year, 1 January 2020
A new year greeting at the start of a new decade, written before anyone knew what the year would contain.
National Days & Anniversaries
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