Ukraine hopes to boost export capacity by 50% in coming months

Ears of wheat are seen in a subject close to the village of Hrebeni in Kyiv location, Ukraine July 17, 2020. Image taken July 17, 2020. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

KYIV, May 6 (Reuters) – Ukraine hopes to increase export potential by 50% in the up coming handful of months by expanding amenities on its western border, but it will nevertheless be far small of pre-war degrees, the deputy infrastructure minister stated on Friday.

Far more than ten seaports carried 75% of Ukraine’s international trade, but they had been shut just after the Russian invasion and the state was pressured to trade through smaller Danube river ports and use railway terminals on its western border.

“Western borders and Danube ports these days is the only way to export and import. We have presently quadrupled the volume of trade by way of the Danube ports,” Yuri Vaskov explained to a news convention.

He said 3.5 million tonnes of cargo was transported across the western borders by rail by itself past thirty day period and the national railway operators are building border terminals for general and liquid cargoes, as perfectly as for reloading from wide to slim gauge and vice versa.

“All this should guide to the truth that the capability of the western border should really increase by 50% in the upcoming handful of months,” Vaskov explained.

“But even taking this into account, this (larger ability) will not be adequate even to provide at the very least 50 % of the volumes that were being transported by seaports in peacetime,” he explained.

Ukraine, a important global grain grower and exporter, has sharply diminished its grain exports since start off of the Russian invasion to all over 1 million tonnes in April from up to 6 million tonnes just before the war.

Reporting by Pavel Polityuk Enhancing by Toby Chopra

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