Several local media outlets wrote overnight and this morning that President Volodymyr Zelensky is considering veteran businessman and politician Sergiy Tigipko for the position of prime minister, with one report saying the potential appointment is “99% decided”. Reports also quoted a government source as saying an official announcement about Tigipko would be made upon the planned completion of an IMF mission’s visit to Kyiv today.

The Finance Ministry sold UAH 1.5bn of hryvnia-denominated bonds yesterday, matching last week’s issuance. MinFin tapped its longest available 7-year bonds for only UAH 0.2bn at 9.95% p.a., down from an inaugural UAH 3.6bn at the end of January and 16bp above the January placement level. It also sold UAH 0.6bn of 2-year bonds at 10.0% (in line with two weeks ago), UAH 0.5bn of 1-year debt at 9.9% (+27bp w-o-w), and UAH 0.2bn of 3-month paper at 9.4% (-6bp from two weeks ago). MinFin imposed last-minute caps on all maturities except for the 7-year bond, but actual placement volumes still fell short of those limits. In the absence of UAH bond redemptions this week, the net placement volume stood at UAH 1.5bn, up from a UAH 3.0bn net redemption last week, bringing YTD net redemptions to virtually zero.

President Volodymyr Zelensky commented yesterday on coal industry reforms, saying he wanted to ensure guaranteed supplies to domestic coal-fired power plants for local coal miners and increase the share of coal-fired power generation in the next decade. The president insisted on limiting electricity imports from Russia and Belarus in order to increase domestic coal consumption.

Ukrnafta signed an amicable settlement with one of its debtors, Kotlas Ltd, to which Ukrnafta supplied UAH 2.5bn worth of oil in 2015 but received no payment. The agreement envisions quarterly repayments of principal until 2025 and an interest rate of 14.4%.

An expanded version of the Razumkov Center poll from Feb. 13-17, which we wrote about yesterday, showed a substantial drop in popular support for President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Capital investment in Ukraine rose by 15.5% y-o-y in real terms in 2019 following a 16.4% increase in 2018. In nominal terms, capital investment stood at $22.6bn last year, up 17% y-o-y.

Ukraine’s 2020 grain harvest may fall to 65-70 Mt from 75 Mt in 2019, a deputy minister for economy and agriculture said.

Domestic stocks were neutral to positive last week, with the broader KP-Dragon index closing unchanged on weakness in foreign-listed names and the local UX index rising 2.7% w-o-w (+2.6% in UAH terms).

A team of IMF experts headed by mission chief Ron van Rooden arrived in Kyiv last week and is expected to continue talks with Ukrainian authorities until the middle of this week.

According to a Feb. 13-17 survey by independent think tank Razumkov Center, the share of respondents viewing Ukraine’s development pessimistically has increased markedly, with 53% of those questioned being of the opinion that the country is moving “in the wrong direction”, up from 36% in December and 17% in September. The share of optimists decreased accordingly, to 25% from 44% in December and 57% in September.

Parliament continued to debate amendments to the farmland market bill last week, which the opposition submitted in the thousands in a bid to delay land reform. Lawmakers went through 1,505 out of more than 4,000 amendments, or 37% of the total, before adjourning on Friday, with only a single amendment passing.

Ukraine’s retail trade turnover rose by 12.1% y-o-y in January, slowing marginally from 12.5% in December but accelerating from 10.5% in 2019 and 6.3% in January 2019. At the same time, the Consumer Confidence Index declined by 3.1 points m-o-m in January, to 89.0 on a 0-200 scale —8.5 points below last September’s high but up a solid 23.4 points y-o-y.

The government approved priority areas for allocating agricultural subsidies in 2020, budgeted at UAH 4.2bn ($173m). The funds would go toward reimbursing interest costs (UAH 1.2bn or $49m), supporting animal farmers (UAH 1.0bn or $41m), and partially reimbursing equipment purchases (UAH 1.0bn or $41m), among key outlays.

LSE-listed JKX Oil & Gas reported repaying $5.8m of convertible bonds, including $5.4m of principal and $.04m of interest. Separately, JKX said CFO Ben Fraser would leave the company and hand over his responsibilities to Dmitry Poddubniy, who acted as group CFO in 2017.