Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine (MIU) plans to sign concession agreements on the assets of SE (state enterprise) Stevedoring Company Olvia and SE Kherson Sea Trade Port the same day, as announced by Minister of Infrastructure Vladyslav Kryklii and reported by Press Office of MIU.
“Ukrainian ports should work to full capacity. For the first time in Ukraine’s history we have conducted honest and transparent tenders in the ports of Olvia and Kherson. In the nearest future the corresponding agreements will be signed”, Mr Kryklii noted in the course of his business trip in Mykolaiv Region on Friday 08 May.
According to him, Ukrainian ports’ capacities are still utilised only by half, therefore two possible ways of their modernisation have been opted for: first, the ports showing cargo handling growth (such as, e.g. Pivdenny) remain public; and second, the ports requiring additional investments for their further development are transferred to concession.
“This is going to not only increase revenues to state and local budgets, thus securing wages, salaries, pensions, progress of education, science and culture. This is going to secure also jobs for the people and decent payment for their labour. We guarantee to labour forces of the concessioned ports retention of their jobs within 5 years”, added Minister.
Yesterday on 12 May he also reported that the litigation blocking the concession agreement on Kherson Port has been won by MIU in Supreme Court thus lifting the last obstacle. The court’s blocking decision had ensued from the claim from a local company which had lost the tender and challenged its result. Further on MIU declared that the court verdict failed to take into consideration and evaluate properly the Ministry’s arguments, and appealed to the highest instance.
“Today Supreme Court of Ukraine has disaffirmed the Appeal Administrative Court verdict blocking the concession tender completion. This decision is final and not subject to any appeal. We intend to negotiate with the winner in the closest time, in order to conclude concession agreements for the ports of Kherson and Olvia on one and the same day”, he wrote in Facebook on Tuesday.
SE SC Olvia and SE Kherson STP are the port sector concession pilot projects implementation sites. The projects were approved by MIU on 23 June 2016, their feasibility study was developed in 2018 by the consortium of international consultants (Castalia, EY, MTBS Ukraine et alii) funded by EBRD and IFC.
The Olvia concession tender is won by QTerminals from Qatar undertaking to invest 3.4Bn UAH (~$126M) in 5 years, with annual fees to the state as 82M UAH (~$3M) that is 16 times as the public stevedore’s profit for 2019. Moreover, the concessionaire is going to invest 80M UAH the city infrastructure of Mykolaiv. As per QTerminals DG Nevill Bisset, the company plans to develop the port as a grain hub.
The Kherson concession tender is won by LLC Risol Kherson owned by Georgian Industrial Group (60%) and Risoil S.A., Switzerland (40%). The winner undertakes to invest almost 300M UAH, pay the fixed concession fee of 12M UAH, and the annual variable fees at 7%.
Договора о концессии «Ольвии» и ХМТП будут подписаны в один день — Криклий
https://cfts.org.ua/news/2020/05/13/verkhovnyy_sud_razblokiroval_kontsessiyu_porta_kherson_58675