Well, Paul Krugman certainly got it right on this one, the Great Depression may now reasonably be considered to have arrived in Ukraine. Ukraine’s GDP declined 20 percent in January year-on-year, according to Valeriy Lytvytsky chief advisor to the chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine. “The decline in GDP in January was about 20 percent according to my reckoning. It’s the biggest drop ever. It’s a bad start,” he said. According to Lytvytsky the construction and industry sectors have been the hardest hit by the economic crisis.

The Statistics Office don’t produce detailed information on the month by month movements in GDP, but using the raw data they do provide I have calculated the monthly growth rates, and have produced the chart below, which gives a pretty clear idea of what has been happening.

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by Edward Hugh: Barcelona Yesterday, the Ukraine received a USD16.5bn loan from the IMF and the IMF at the same time said that it would agree with the Hungarian government on a rescue package in the coming days. Under normally circumstances this would be good news for CEE assets. However, it seems like the markets are totally giving up on CEE. This morning the Hungarian stock markets have dropped more than 10% despite the promise of an IMF package. ......it is worrying that the CEE markets continue to sell-off despite IMF’s clear commitment to support the region’s markets and economies. One might in fact see the lack of positive response to IMF’s rescue packages for Hungary and the Ukraine as an indication that these packages are in fact making the markets even more nervous that something “is seriously wrong in CEE”. Lars Christensen, Chief Analyst Danske Bank, CEE: Markets fail to respond ...

By Jason Simpkins Associate Editor Russia has generated considerable political ill will throughout the former Soviet Union and even in Europe by renationalizing its energy sector – ultimately using such state-run ventures as OAO Gazprom and its resource-rich position as weapons of economic diplomacy. And now that Russia has formed a state-run grain trader, analysts fear that Moscow is expanding these bare-fisted tactics to its agricultural sector. The new enterprise –The enterprise, the Agency for the Regulation of Food Prices, will take control of 28 government-controlled assets, including storage depots, grain elevators, flour mills and export terminals. The agency will control between 40% and 50% of the nation’s cereal exports by 2011. “The aim of creating the company is quite clear. As grain trade becomes attractive, bureaucrats are looking for ways of making some extra money using government resources,” a ...

Some interesting trivia about Ukraine:

1. The Ukrainian stock market grew tenfold between 2000 and 2006
2. It is ranked 28th in GDP by purchasing power parity.
3. It has a low low Gini coefficient which means it has more equal income or wealth distribution than other countries.
4. It is ranked 53rd in the world for Nominal GDP.
5. It was the republic with the second largest economy when it was part of the Soviet Union.
6. In 2006, they had economic growth greater than 5%.
7. The average annual growth of salaries has been 20% for the last five years.
8. It is known for the production of all types of transportation vehicles including automobiles, trucks, buses, ships, airplanes, subway cars, rail cars, and spacecraft.

Here are some stocks which operate in Ukraine:

Mobile TeleSystems (MBT) provides cellular telecommunications services in Russia, …