•Ryanair service in Ukraine will get underway in October with plans for Europe's premier low-fare airline to introduce flights to four destinations from Kyiv and seven from Lviv. The carrier will use Kyiv's Boryspil International Airport – not Zhuliany, as originally planned – to fly to Eindhoven, London, Manchester and Stockholm. From Lviv, Ryanair will fly to London, Eindhoven, Berlin, Memmingen, Krakow, Wrosclaw and Budapest.

•The Anti-Monopoly Committee and the World Bank are partnering on a pilot project aimed at enhancing market competition in Ukraine, Ukrinform reported. A first draft of the particulars about the program will be drawn up in July, the monopoly watchdog's chairman said.

•With a few months remaining in the current agricultural year, Ukraine has already realized 75 percent of its grain export potential for the period, UkrAgroConsult reported. As a result, a marked slowdown in grain exports is expected in the last quarter. The bumper grain crop in 2016 allowed Ukraine to retain its traditional export markets and enter new ones.

•A Japanese trade delegation is touring Ukraine to give entrepreneurs from the Asian power a chance to become familiar with investment opportunities and projects in Ukraine, according to Ukrinform. Economic Development Minister Stepan Kubiv emphasized the importance of attracting more Japanese investment in Ukraine now that the domestic economy has stabilized.

•Canadian company Maritime Launch Services, a joint venture of three American companies, is building a $110 million rocket spaceport in Nova Scotia to send Ukrainian rockets into space, according to CBC News and Interfax Ukraine. The Cyclone 4 rockets to be launched at the site are built by Ukrainian company Yuzhnoe and Yuzhmash. Maritime plans to open the spaceport within a year and hopes to launch eight rockets a year by 2022.

•Bio-Line-Reni, a Ukrainian agricultural supply company, plans to build an organic grains terminal at the Reni Seaport in Odesa with a private investment of $1.6 million, according to UkrAgroConsult. Port officials said the new terminal will generate up to 120,000 tons of additional cargo per year. Preliminary estimates put the increase in the number of ship visits to the port at between 80 and 90.

•Danish investors plan to start construction this year on a 1.1 megawatt biogas plant in Ukraine. Danosha, a company headquartered in the Ivano-Frankivsk region that is funded entirely by Danish capital, estimates that construction will take two years to complete. The company is looking to attract support for the project from international backers NEFCO and IFU.

•The National Security and Defense Council ordered the government to swiftly devise and deploy a road map to ensure the reliability of the country's fuel, energy and metallurgy systems, according to Interfax Ukraine.

•Ukraine's central bank is suggesting that Russian state-owned banks with branches in Ukraine be prevented from withdrawing their capital from the country, multiple sources reported. The banks at issue are Sberbank, Prominvestbank, VTB Bank, BM Bank and VS Bank.

•Ukraine is enlisting the help of two American companies, DebtX and First Financial Network, as advisers in the National Bank of Ukraine's sale of the assets of insolvent banks, Interfax Ukraine reported. "This will allow the Ukrainian troubled assets market to be open to the world, attract best practices and get international investors interested. It will increase the effectiveness of the sale of assets," the Deposit Guarantee Fund stated. Buyers will be sought both domestically and abroad.

For comments and news tips, please email UBJ AM editor David Edwards at david.edwards@theubj.com.