Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in the first reading adopted a draft law "On prevention of financial crisis effect on construction branch development and residential construction". The law is aimed at stabilization of construction branch, providing residents with accommodation and stimulation of residential construction on the financial crisis background. The draft law defines the "affordable housing" notion and the requirements to it. The state support will be realized by the state making the down payment in the amount of 30% of the construction cost (price) of the housing. The rest is to be paid by the citizens who signed the corresponding contracts for getting the state support. The draft law ...

Ministry of Regional Development and Construction of Ukraine will finance the most significant construction projects. The corresponding resolution was made during the collegium of the Ministry. According to the resolution of the Ministry, the funds for purchasing construction materials and payment of salaries to builders are to be allocated from the state budget. Currently the Ministry has been working on making a list of the projects the construction of which is to be financed by the state. As planned earlier, such projects are first to be selected by the local authorities who would then subject them for consideration of Ministry of Regional Development and Construction. The Ministry will ...

Ministry of Regional Development and Construction of Ukraine is planning to bring Ukrainian standards of hotel construction in accordance with the European ones. According to the Ministry, currently the package of state hotel construction standards corresponding to the European ones has been prepared and is to become due in February 2009. Bringing Ukrainian standards of hotel construction in accordance with the European ones is carried out in order to develop hotel real estate segment in Ukraine by attracting large foreign investors – international hotel operators. ...

Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine signed Memorandum of Understanding with construction organizations, their associations and construction materials producers. According to the Memorandum, construction organizations are obliged to work on cost reduction of their production with implementation of new technological and functional solutions. Construction organizations will carry on realization of their investment projects aimed at implementation of energy saving technologies and energy efficient construction materials. Beside that, companies will do everything to minimize reduction of staff, salaries and other areas of social protection by diversifying to new areas of works, products and...

On October 14, 2008 the Law of Ukraine "On bringing changes to certain legislative acts of Ukraine regarding construction support" as of 16.09.2008 came into force. According to the law changes are brought to the legislative acts regulating land legal relations, city planning, construction permit issuing, local construction regulations, etc. As part of land legal relations the following changes were brought to Land Code: in case the corresponding authority's resolution as to object location approval or land plot rezoning permit is issued till January 1, 2008, the transfer of such land plots is to be made without any auction. http://news.liga.net/ ...

Ministry of Regional Development and Construction of Ukraine has been appointed as general customer of housing purchase for state funds during 1 January 2008 – 31 December 2010 by the corresponding regulation of the Cabinet of Ministers. According to the government order, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Regional Development and Construction and Ministry of Economic Affairs are to make a list of uncompleted residential construction objects with a level of completion of over 70% and to allocate the funds from the state budget to their completion. According to the document, estimated profit from selling this housing is not to be over 15% of the construction cost and the profitability of...

In ten months of 2008 State Architecture and Construction Control (SACC) inspection boards accepted 27 680 real estate objects. According to Ministry of Regional Development and Construction of Ukraine in January-October 2008 the inspection boards of SACC issued 29 835 construction permits. The inspectors checked 50 000 real estate construction objects. As a result 80 000 instructions to eliminate the violations in construction were issued and 40 000 fines were imposed. ...

Ministry of Housing and Utilities of Ukraine offered to set up construction-savings banks which are aimed at creating the possibility of mortgage financing for the residents. According to Aleksei Kucherenko, Minister of Housing and Utilities of Ukraine, in order to receive the mortgage loan from a construction-savings bank a person will have to save minimum 50% of the apartment cost placing money in the construction-savings banks with a 3% yearly interest rate. The rest of the amount is to be provided by the bank with a 4% rate. ...

Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine held a meeting with construction companies' representatives regarding the problem issues in construction industry. During the meeting Yulia Timoshenko offered to support the industry development saying that authorities and constructors should combine efforts in order to solve the problem of sufficient financing of construction. Prime Minister encouraged construction companies' representatives to take part in the respective measures and legislative acts elaboration. The government is also intended to take measures in order to simplify construction permit receiving procedures and to solve the existing taxation problems. The government offered to set up a...

Kyiv City Council lowered the fee paid by construction companies as their share in social and engineering infrastructure development of Kyiv. According to the corresponding resolution of Kyiv City Council the payments for premium class residential real estate construction were down 15% and now amount to UAH 170/sq m, payments for cottage and houses construction – 23.3% (UAH 115/sq m), payments for social housing construction remained the same – UAH 20.4/sq m. Payments for companies constructing office, commercial, recreational and industrial real estate were decreased as well. In general, payments for residential real estate construction were down 14.83%; non-residential...