The mining-metallurgical complex, responsible for some 30% of the currency income of Ukraine, could become profitless.
“The market is falling, construction is idle, and there are no infrastructure projects, metal consumption decreases. World market faces metal surplus of 300-400 million tons, that affects both the product and the iron ore raw materials prices”, said Zaporizhstal finance director Ruslan Bozhko.
According to him, VAT reimbursement policy of the state makes things even worse.
“There are special criteria, that a company has to meet, to automatically get VAT back. In 2014 Zaporizhstal met all the criteria, but because of the peculiar wording of the legislation and due to unknown reasons, VAT is simply not reimbursed”, he added.
“So far the state owes Metinvest group some 2.4 billion UAH of VAT. Taking into account that the group pays around 500 million UAH of VAT per month, the debt is up to 6 billion UAH per year”, explained Bozhko. (Ukrainian metal)