Ukraine March industry output falls 1.1 pct y/y
* Oil refining shows deepest decline
* Russia’s TNK-BP shut down Ukrainian refinery in March
(Adds details, background)
KYIV, April 18 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s industrial output
shrank by 1.1 percent year-on-year in March after growing 1.6
percent in February, the State Statistics Service said on
Wednesday, after the country’s second-biggest oil refinery shut
down due to losses.
Output decline was most notable in the oil products sector,
where production dropped by 20.7 percent year-on-year.
Russian oil and gas company TNK-BP closed its
Lysychansk refinery in Ukraine in early March as it could not
compete with imports from Russia and Belarus, where refineries
receive oil without a hefty export duty imposed by Moscow.
Lysychansk, with a capacity to refine 8 million tonnes of
oil a year, was the second largest of Ukraine’s six refineries.
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, speaking at a government
meeting earlier on Wednesday, said the industrial sector was
under pressure from record-high prices for oil and gas which
Ukraine imports.
The metals sector, which accounts for a bulk of Ukrainian
exports, also registered a 1.6 percent year-on-year decline in
March. In month-on-month terms, overall industrial output rose
9.8 percent in March after rising by 0.4 percent in February.
(Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Mark Heinrich)