(Text after paragraph 7 has been added in news item issued on Oct 7) KYIV. Oct 8 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The preliminary profit of Ukrspyrt in the first nine months of 2015 amounted to UAH 200 million against a loss of UAH 550 million in 2014, Ukrspyrt Acting Director Roman Ivaniuk has said. "Our financial result for the first six months [of the year] amounted to UAH 96 million, i.e. for the third quarter Ukrspyrt earned more than UAH 100 million. This must be the minimum benchmark to focus on for the state and future leaders," he said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine. He said the net profit margin was 15% against 5% in the best of times. Total operational expenses for the first nine months of 2015 amounted to UAH 100 million against UAH 285 million in 2014. The entirety of the profit was used to repay debts. Ukrspyrt repaid UAH 280 million, of which UAH 75 million was spent on a loan, UAH 102 million was given to the state budget, and more than UAH 10 million was sent to suppliers. According to the acting head, the company now has only 5% of 100% overdue debts. Ivaniuk noted the debt for grain is about UAH 50 million and this is the major operating debt. The rest is the debt is owed to the budget on penalties and fines and this issue needs to be solved at the state level, he stressed. "Everyone blames me for reducing production at Ukrspyrt. It's true, we produced 6.4 million decaliters compared to 8.6 million decaliters in 2014. However, the profit per decaliter was 28.80 compared to UAH 11 year-over-year, with Ukrspyrt's markup much smaller than it was last year," Ivaniuk said. He added that when he was appointed as company head, the company's balance sheet included 1.2 million decaliters of products which no-one needed, which made this frozen public money. "Of course, we sold it, instead of producing and again freezing. The real fall of production was 26%, but if we add 1.2 million decaliters at the warehouse – the decline would be no more than 10%," he said. Ukrspyrt is subordinated to the Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry. In 2014, Ukrspyrt plants produced around 15 million decaliters of alcohol; the entire volume was sold on the domestic market.