• Ukraine is to receive 600 million euros from the European Union if it allows timber exports, Ekonomicheskaya Pravda reported. At the Ukraine-EU summit a few days earlier, President Petro Poroshenko promised to end the export ban.

• The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will help prepare Oschadbank for privatization and loan the bank $50 million euros to increase the bank’s value and make it more attractive to potential investors, Interfax Ukraine reported. Oschadbank is Ukraine’s second-largest ban by total assets and is wholly owned by the state.

• Chinese company Huawei is looking at the possibility of opening an R&D; center and a key laboratory in Ukraine, ain.ua reported.

• Ukraine simplified certification of automobiles from the United States and Asia, according to Novoe Vremya. This means that vehicles made by American and Asian manufacturers can be imported into Ukraine without modification of their windshields and seat belts to EU standards.

• On a related note, the automotive market is showing signs of life again this year after a brutal 2015, Novoe Vremya reported. It interviewed AVT Bavaria chief Alexander Timofeev, who said the country’s awful roads are forcing consumers to choose crossover vehicles.

• Ukreximbank and the World Bank are laying the groundwork for a program to give long-term loans to small and midsize businesses that rely heavily on exporting, Interfax Ukraine reported.

• The national sugar producers association is hoping to make direct deliveries of Ukrainian beet sugar to China, bypassing Hong Kong, according to Interfax Ukraine. Chinese supermarkets offer an attractive price of $1.40 per kilo of sugar.

• Ukrainian officials say they are going to build a rail line with European rather than Russian width tracks, a step that will aid their integration into the West and mark another from the Russian world. The report came from Segodnya.

• Turkey will provide Ukraine with a $50 million loan, according to a report by Ukrinform. Turkey is making the loan to help Ukraine right its struggling economy.

• Vineyards in the Odessa region that are owned by a French vintner were bulldozed in what the owner calls an act of raiding by a rival, Ekonomicheskaya Pravda.