Profits are soaring at Ukraine’s top 100 state-owned enterprises (SOE) as the economy finds its feet and starts to recover. Net profits of the 94 biggest SOEs jumped 20-fold year-on-year between January and September 2016 to UAH40bn ($1.5bn), according to the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.

Ukraine’s three giant SOEs dominate the play led by the national gas company Naftogaz Ukrainy, railway company Ukrzaliznytsia and power holding Energoatom.

The fortunes of Naftogaz have been totally transformed by the reform programme as one of the first demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was for domestic gas prices to be hiked. That has changed the company from being a huge weight on the budget to a profitable concern. The ministry reported that profits from the oil and gas industry were over half of the total earned by the SOEs, or UAH25.5bn, a 120-fold increase on the same period a year earlier.

“This growth can be explained by reforming the price policy of Naftogaz, whose net profit increased by 108 times compared with the same period in 2015,” the ministry said, reports Interfax.

According to the agency, for the first nine months of 2015 Naftogaz posted a net profit of UAH234mn ($9mn), while in January-September 2016 the profit was UAH25.5bn.

All of the state-owned assets showed growing net income, if not all were profitable, with the exception of the chemical and coal industries, where incomes fell by 38%, to UAH7.5bn, and by 18%, to UAH3.9bn, respectively, the ministry said in its report.

This year the government hopes to restart the privatistaion programme and putting first into profit will make the process easier.

The State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF) will start offering tenders to sell shares of eight electricity supply and generating companies in August, the government privatisation body said on July 24. The move is an attempt to restart the country’s privatisation programme, which flopped last year.