{"id":38541,"date":"2025-11-17T12:05:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T09:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/?p=38541"},"modified":"2025-12-05T15:02:37","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T12:02:37","slug":"266-where-to-invest-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/266-where-to-invest-in-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Where to invest in Ukraine? Will the new stock exchange take off? Andrii Zhurzhii"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat\u2019s Up With the Economy?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0is a podcast by the Centre for Economic Strategy in cooperation with Hromadske Radio, supported by PrivatBank.<\/i><\/p>\n

Every week, hosts\u00a0Anhelina Zavadetska<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Maksym Samoiliuk<\/a>\u00a0talk with experts, entrepreneurs, analysts, and government officials about what is happening with Ukraine\u2019s economy.<\/i><\/p>\n

While the podcast is held in Ukrainian, we decided to summarise each issue with the most important insights.<\/i><\/p>\n

In the new episode of the podcast \u00abWhat\u2019s Up With the Economy?\u00bb we talk about the development of investment in Ukraine together with Andrii Zhurzhii, founder and CEO of the investment company Inzhur.<\/span><\/p>\n

How does the first REIT fund in Ukraine work?<\/b><\/h3>\n

A REIT is a way to invest in real estate with small amounts of money. You don\u2019t need to buy an entire apartment or building \u2014 you simply buy the fund\u2019s securities, and the fund owns large commercial properties. It pools money from many people and buys, for example, a supermarket, a restaurant, or a retail park. The return comes from rental payments.<\/span><\/p>\n

In simple terms: it\u2019s like becoming a \u00abco-owner\u00bb of a piece of large real estate, but without repairs, tenants, or the risks of unfinished construction. The idea came to Ukraine from the United States of the 1960s. Today this model exists in 46 countries, according to the European Real Estate Investment Trust Association.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00abIn fact, a REIT allows small amounts of capital from many people to be combined into large capital, and through this large capital to invest in assets that most citizens wouldn\u2019t be able to access otherwise, simply because they don\u2019t have that much money.\u00bb \u2014\u00a0 says Andrii Zhurzhii.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ukrainian REITs are only beginning to form. In Ukraine, the habit of investing in an \u00abapartment at the excavation stage\u00bb has persisted for years, but this approach often brings far less real profit than people expect. The main reason is that most investors look only at the amount they receive \u00abin hand\u00bb, but don\u2019t calculate annual percentage returns. If someone says \u00abI earn 500 dollars a month\u00bb, that means nothing without understanding the initial investment and the expenses they don\u2019t account for.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second problem is that investors rarely assess risks. Construction can be delayed, frozen, or become more expensive. Additional fees, repairs, long periods without tenants, and maintenance costs often arise. As a result, what seems like a \u00abreliable investment\u00bb sometimes turns into an asset with low profitability and many hidden expenses.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Ukrainian stock exchange: why Inzhur wants to build it from scratch<\/b><\/h3>\n

The idea of creating a full-fledged stock market in Ukraine has long seemed almost utopian. Over the past 30\u201335 years, no institution has managed to launch an exchange that operates like those in most developed countries. Ukraine effectively has no real stock market \u2014 most operations involve government bonds, and many deals bypass traditional public trading.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00abThere really is no stock market in Ukraine. There is some sort of fa\u00e7ade, some exchanges that claim they trade something. The main trades are government securities. Moreover, most trades are off-exchange deals. Buyers agree outside the exchange to execute transactions, and they simply record them on the exchange for various reasons. They want the deal to be anonymous, or, as far as I know, commissions on government bonds are simply lower on the exchange due to the National Bank\u2019s tariffs than off-exchange.\u00bb \u2014 Zhurzhii shared.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inzhur already generates significantly more activity than the existing exchanges. Around 80,000 transactions with private securities were conducted last year \u2014 roughly four times more than the two active exchanges process (excluding government bonds). This shows that liquidity exists, but it\u2019s not visible \u2014 instead of being public.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Inzhur, creating an exchange is not a PR project but a necessity. The company aims to conduct the first public IPO in Ukraine within three years, and for that, it needs a platform that investors trust. Moreover, European law requires REIT funds to be traded on an exchange \u2014 without this, Ukraine cannot appear on the global investment map.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00abWe\u2019ve set ourselves the goal of doing our own IPO in Ukraine in three years and showing it on our own exchange. Demonstrating that capital and investors exist, we expect that other companies will follow our example when they see that hundreds of millions of dollars can be raised here. You can call it dreaming, but we visualise it and move toward it. And I can say that, on my way to you, I signed the founding documents for the Ukrainian Stock Exchange Inzhur at the notary.\u00bb\u2014 Zhurzhii shared.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What\u2019s happening with the construction of Inzhur\u2019s community power plant?<\/b><\/h3>\n

\u00abAfter the latest strikes, when 75% of our thermal generation and about 30% of our hydropower generation were destroyed. There was this closed meeting of big businesses, and a representative of DTEK first explained how bad things would be in the energy sector, how tough the winter would be for us. And then Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, at that time the head of Ukrenergo, said: look, this is the positive scenario. And you sit there thinking: we lease real estate \u2014 but how are our tenants supposed to operate?\u00bb \u2014 shared Zhurzhii.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story of building Inzhur Energy\u2019s maneuverable power plant shows that even projects critically important to the country can face paradoxical resistance. Despite the fact that the station was supposed to provide fast backup capacity of 18 MW \u2014 enough to prevent entire neighborhoods from being disconnected during energy shortages \u2014 its implementation was delayed for several months. <\/span>The key reason is that some local residents simply do not want the facility nearby, even if it is safe, quiet, and environmentally neutral.<\/p>\n

\u00abWhen you show documents proving there are no emissions, no noise, that all engineering calculations have been completed \u2014 they say: well, a missile could hit it. But a missile could hit anywhere, and these are definitely not the kinds of stations that get targeted. Because, again, the stations we are building are small units. Could one be hit? Probably, yes. But they are not a priority target. Their role is simply to stabilize the system.\u00bb \u2014 Andrii Zhurzhii.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This contrast becomes even more striking when compared to Europe, where similar technologies have long been operating without controversy. In Berlin, right in the city center, on the grounds of a hospital, there are two identical megawatt-class gas engines \u2014 and they operate for heat or electricity without any conflict with residents. A city known for some of the strictest environmental standards treats this as a normal part of the infrastructure that ensures stability.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Ukraine, the problem is amplified by weak state institutions. Even when the relevant authorities officially confirm there are no violations, a court can still block construction based solely on assumptions. A small plant will not save the entire energy system, but each 18 MW of balancing capacity means tens of thousands of households that could remain with electricity.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat\u2019s Up With the Economy?\u201d\u00a0is a podcast by the Centre for Economic Strategy in cooperation with Hromadske Radio, supported by PrivatBank. Every week, hosts\u00a0Anhelina Zavadetska\u00a0and\u00a0Maksym Samoiliuk\u00a0talk with experts, entrepreneurs, analysts, and government officials about what is happening with Ukraine\u2019s economy. While the podcast is held in Ukrainian, we decided to summarise each issue with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":38440,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[666,200],"tags":[568],"experts":[462,525],"news_type":[138],"class_list":["post-38541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","category-news-list-en","tag-business-and-investment-en","experts-maksym-samoiliuk-en","experts-anhelina-zavadetska","news_type-press-release"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38541"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38915,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38541\/revisions\/38915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38541"},{"taxonomy":"experts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/experts?post=38541"},{"taxonomy":"news_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_type?post=38541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}