KIEV, June 17 – Ukraine's gross foreign debt grew by 2.7% to $120.5 billion in Q1, according to the National Bank of Ukraine.

"In the first quarter of 2011 Ukraine's gross foreign debt grew by $3.1 billion, or 2.7%, to $120.5 billion (84.1% of GDP) as of April 1, 2011," the NBU said in a posting on its official Web site.

KIEV, June 17 – The pickup of Ukraine’s GDP growth over the first five months of 2012, from 4.6-4.9% in April to some 5% in May, provides encouraging news that the country’s economic recovery may be accelerating, according to Valeriy Lytvytsky, the head of the group of advisors to the National Bank of Ukraine's governor.

KIEV, June 20 - Ukraine’s largest steel and mining group Metinvest plans to double output of steel to 30 million mt/year in the next several years, the company said in a statement Monday.

KIEV, June 20 - Ukraine may begin tapping shale gas deposits in the second quarter of 2012 after contracts with major energy oil and gas companies are signed, a senior official at Naftogaz Ukrayiny said over the weekend.

KIEV, June 17 – Ukraine believes that a priority for the CIS is to complete new wording of a free trade area agreement and sign it at a summit of the CIS member states, Ukraine's representative in the CIS Economic Council, First Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Kliuyev, told journalists in St. Petersburg, Russia.

KIEV, June 18 – The new wording of the tax code is aimed at supporting big business at the expense of small and medium businesses, according to the shadow government.

"The target of this code is to give the possibility to one hundred companies to transfer taxation to millions citizens of the country," MP from the BYT faction and head of the committee for budget and financial policy Serhiy Teriokhin said at a meeting of the opposition government in Kiev on Thursday.

KIEV, June 18 – Ukraine's gross foreign debt as of early April 2010 came to $102.8 billion, falling by $500 million or by 0.5%, according to a report by the National Bank of Ukraine.

ODESSA, June 18 – The Fuel and Energy Ministry, Naftogaz Ukrayiny, Belneftekhim Concern and BNK-Ukraine have signed a protocol of talks on the creation of a joint venture to sell Belarusan light fuel in Ukraine.

KIEV, June 18 – EnergoAtom, Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear generating company, has declared Russia's Techsnabexport the winner of a tender to buy nuclear fuel for reactors.

WARSAW, June 19 - Poland's efforts to diversify sources of energy supplies through imports from the Caspian via the Caucasus, the Black Sea and Ukraine are "going well," President Lech Kaczynski said Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan, according to a report by the Polish Press Agency (PAP).