Daily monitor

At a meeting in St Petersburg the Ukrainian, Russian and Kazakh ministers of agriculture disclosed the intention of creating a Black Sea region grain pool.

According to a note from the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine, CPI grew 0.5% MoM in May (14.7% YoY, 7.4% YTD). PPI declined 0.7% MoM (4.4% YoY growth, 2.8% YTD growth)

Myronovsky Khliboproduk [MHPC LI, BUY], has released its 1Q09 financial and operational results. Key operational results: chicken production facilities are operating at full capacity, meat production is unchanged from the 2008 level; the poultry selling price denominated in UAH increased by 18% YoY, the cost production of 1 kg slightly decreased YoY.

The National Communication Regulation Commission (NCRC), the state regulator, has announced new interconnect tariffs for F2M termination calls. NCRC has proposed a new tariff of UAH 0.45 per minute through the end of the current year and UAH 0.4 per minute from Jan 1, 2010. The interconnect tariff for M2F will stay at USH 0.25 per minute.

In an interview with Ukrainian News, Oleg Svinarchuk, President of Bogdan Automobile Plant [LUAZ UZ, U/R], claimed that the company has reduced its expectations regarding plant capacity utilization from 60-70% to 20-40%.

According to a press release from Zaporizhtransformator [ZATR UZ, N/R] – the world's largest manufacturer of transformer equipment – the company has modernized its winding equipment, which includes three vertical and one horizontal winding machines.

Ukrainian News reported on iron, crude steel, and rolled products production for May.

Ukrainian News reported on pipe production for May, which amounted to 133.1 thsd mt. This is up 13% MoM, but still 36% below the average 2008 monthly output of 208.8 thsd mt.

Ukrainian News, a news agency, ran an interview with Vitaliy Kornievskiy, interim CEO of Dniprospetsstal [DNSS UZ, U/R]. Kornievskiy reported a loss (either net or before tax) of UAH 46.9 mln (USD 6.1 mln) for 1Q09. The company is probing various sources in order to finance several CapEx projects (total of about USD 90 mln until 2012), including debt and financing from equipment suppliers.

The State Property Fund (SPF) announced the schedule of privatization auctions for 2-4Q09 quarters 2009. In particular, the SPF intends to sell a 46% stake in regional power distributing company Cherkasyoblenergo [CHON UZ, BUY] on the local stock exchange in November 2009.