REUTERS
A decision on the further operations of Odesa Portside Chemical Plant, which failed to be sold, will be made in the coming days, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said Tuesday.
"I have given relevant instructions, now it’s First Deputy Prime minister Stepan Kubiv who is dealing with this issue. They held several meetings of the working group. I believe before the end of the week he [Stepan Kubiv] will submit proposals, what decisions need to be taken to resolve the issue of the OPP," said Groysman.
Earlier Stepan Kubiv also said that the decision on the future operation of the plant will be made in the coming days, taking into account all the calculations and views of interested parties.
Read alsoThird attempt to sell OPP. One more fail.UNIAN memo. The OPP, which is located in the town of Yuzhny in Odesa, is Ukraine's second-largest ammonia and carbamide producer and the third-largest manufacturer of nitrogen fertilizers.
The company also handles shipments of chemical products arriving from CIS countries and exports. The company holds a monopoly in the national market of specialized services for the receipt, cooling and transshipment of ammonia.
This year, the State Property Fund made two attempts to sell the OPP but both attempts failed.
In this regard, its further operations are threatened to be halted as the company has a nearly $251 million debt to Ostchem owned by a Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash and more than a UAH 500 million debt to Naftogaz of Ukraine, while the contract for gas supplies to the OPP expires December 31.
Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolev predicted that the debt before the holding would grow to UAH 1.5 billion by year-end. At the same time, he sees no economic justification to transfer the management of OPP to Naftogaz before the mechanism of debt repayment is developed.