By KYIV. Oct 27 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Metinvest Mining and Metallurgical Group is negotiating with the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine and the Office of the President on streamlining the legislation and regulations in order to ease the fiscal burden on operating enterprises in wartime and increase production capacity utilization.
CEO of the company Yuriy Ryzhenkov said in an interview within the framework of the Forbes Ukraine special project "Country of Heroes," the current year is becoming the worst for the entire existence of the company.
"But the beginning of the year was normal – in January-February the situation on the markets was quite attractive for metallurgy. But now we have a big problem, first of all, with the loss of enterprises, the loss of people. The second is the loss of supply chains that we have already built. There are serious difficulties now," the top manager stated.
According to him, Zaporizhstal steel plant is now operating at 45-50% capacity, Kametstal is operating at 30% capacity in October, but can increase the load to 60-70% if the market situation is positive.
"Also, if we can find regulatory solutions within the state that will allow this enterprise to increase capacity utilization. So, for example, now there is law No. 5600 on rent increase. Now, for example, rent is taken from the Chinese price, when we cannot even drive our ore to the port. And we cannot not only send it to China, but we cannot even deliver it to all European consumers. Therefore, this decision is incomprehensible for the wartime period. And therefore, we are now in dialogue with the Ministry of Economy, with the President’s Office – we need, at least for the period of the war, to postpone this," the CEO said.
