The port of Gdansk (Poland) in anticipation of an increase in cargo flow with Ukrainian grain harvest-2023 will increase the number of tents and silos to increase transshipment capacity by 0.5 million tons per month, which will allow to transship 5.8 million tons of grain per year, said president of the port Lukasz Malinowski.
“Last year the port terminals transshipped a total of just over 1.9 million tons of grain,” the Polish edition of pap.pl quoted him as saying.
Malinowski stressed that this decision was made in connection with the forecasts of Polish analysts, who expect an even greater swell of grain to be shipped from Polish ports.
“Only from January to the end of May, the volume of grain transshipment in the port was about 1.1 million tons,” stated Malinowski.
According to his information, currently the capacity of the main grain terminals in the port of “Gdansk” is 300 thousand tons per month, and storage capacity – 126 thousand tons. The development of port capacities by almost 70% will allow to increase the transportation of grain in the near future. This will allow during the peak periods to get to the port 1500 trucks with grain.
The Port of Gdansk is gradually increasing the number of parking spaces. In total, there are already 780 parking spaces. By mid-July, their number to 970, said Malinowski.
President of the port also underlined that thanks to rakoraf (devices for taking samples of the grain intended for export – IF), it will be possible to check the quality of the grain in three parking lots within the Port of Gdańsk borders.
As reported, until September 15, 2023 by decision of the European Commission, a ban on imports of Ukrainian grain to five frontline countries: Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.
Oil prices of benchmark grades are weakly falling Thursday morning after an increase in the previous session.
The price of September futures for Brent on London’s ICE Futures Exchange stood at $76.41 a barrel by 8:10 a.m., down $0.24 (0.31%) from the close of the previous session. Those contracts rose $0.4 (0.5%) to $76.65 a barrel on Wednesday.
The price of WTI crude futures for August at electronic trades of NYMEX fell by 6 cents (0.08%) to $71.73 per barrel by that time. The day before these contracts rose $2 (2.9%) to $71.79 a barrel.
A positive factor in previous session was the statements of the Minister of Energy of Saudi Arabia Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman that OPEC+ will do everything necessary to support the oil market.
On Monday, Saudi Arabia announced an extension of its voluntary oil production cut of 1 million bpd for August. Thus, the country’s oil production will remain at around 9 mln bpd in August.
Meanwhile, according to the American Petroleum Institute (API), U.S. oil inventories fell by 4.38 million barrels last week.
Official data from the nation’s Energy Department will be released Thursday at 6 p.m. Q, a day later than usual since Tuesday was a non-working day in the States. Experts polled by Trading Economics, on average, forecast a decrease in oil reserves by about 1 million barrels.
The world’s central banks, according to preliminary data, sold 27.4 tons of gold from international reserves in May 2023, the World Gold Council (WGC) estimated.
By comparison, sales totaled 69.4 tons in April, according to revised figures.
The largest state seller of gold in May was Turkey (62.8 tons). There were also reduced reserves in Uzbekistan (10.9 tons), Kazakhstan (2.4 tons) and Germany (1.8 tons).
They bought gold in reserves in Poland (19.9 tons), China (15.9 tons), Singapore (3.9 tons), Russia (3.1 tons), Iraq (2.3 tons), India (1.9 tons), the Czech Republic (1.8 tons) and Kyrgyzstan (1.5 tons).
IAEA experts are closely monitoring the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) in connection with allegations of a sabotage threat, but during recent inspections no signs of mines were found there, Rafael Grossi, the agency’s director general, said Wednesday.
“I was in contact with experts from the permanent mission to the ZNPP today, just a few hours ago. We are aware of the allegations and statements from both sides. (…) We have not detected any signs of mines during recent inspections, but we remain extremely wary,” Grossi said at a briefing in Japan, commenting on reports of a sabotage threat at the ZNPP.
He added that “we cannot relax now,” and promised to report regularly on the situation at the plant.
According to Grossi, the IAEA has requested access to a number of other locations at the ZNPP. “IAEA experts have asked for additional access. This is needed to make sure there are no mines or explosives at the site,” the IAEA quoted the director general as saying.
“In particular, access is required to the roof over reactors 3 and 4, to the engine room and to some components of the nuclear power plant cooling system,” he added.
The State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF) on July 5 sold state-owned enterprise “Rivnetorf” at a price 4.3 times higher than the starting price – for 205 million UAH at an online privatization auction in the system Prozorro.
“During the auction the price of “Rivnetorf” increased 4.3 times – from the starting price of UAH 47,1 million to UAH 205 million. Twelve bidders competed in the auction,” the SPF website reported on Wednesday.
Under the terms of the auction, the winner has 20 working days to pay the cost of the lot. In addition to the winning bid, he must pay the VAT – 41 million UAH. If he refuses to pay, he will lose 9.4 million UAH guarantee fee.
“Only strategic and profitable assets should remain in state ownership. Peat is not strategic – its share in the energy balance is less than 0.3%,” explained in the SPF.
According to the report, as of March 31, 2023, accounts payable of Rivnetorfa amounted to UAH 6.9 mln, including UAH 1.8 mln on salaries.
The buyer of the plant must repay debts on wages and budget within six months. Also, he will not be able to fire workers on his own initiative during this period.
Gambling business in Ukraine in January-June 2023 paid 2.94 billion UAH of taxes, which is 14 times more than during the same period in 2022, said the first deputy head of the specialized parliamentary committee, head of the temporary investigative commission (TIC) on economic security Yaroslav Zheleznyak.
“Let me remind you: the first half of 2022 gambling business brought to the budget only 209 million UAH. And most of the operators were sitting on the “2%” benefit and were engaged in miscoding,” he wrote in the Telegram-channel on Wednesday
Zheleznyak specified that for June collected 562 million UAH, which is 100 million more than in March, when companies also paid income tax.
“There are still some particularly ‘smart’ ones in the market, especially with income tax, so there will be a continuation,” he added.
In addition, on Wednesday, Ukrainian online casino PIN-UP Ukraine reported paying 1.067 billion UAH to the budget in the first half of this year: in the first quarter – 524.7 million UAH, in the second quarter – 519.2 million UAH.
The company specified that this amount also includes 23.4 million UAH for the license to operate obtained by LLC “Ukr Game Technology” in 2021.
“We strive to become an example of business that contributes to the economic development of the country,” PIN-UP Ukraine COO Igor Zotko said in a statement.
