The first grain port in Poland will be built in Gdansk, in particular for the export of Ukrainian agricultural products, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Robert Telus said at a meeting with voters in Przysus, polskieradio24.pl reports.
According to the report, RSSI (Agri-Food Investment Company – IF-U) has signed an agreement with the Port of Gdansk to implement this project.
“On Tuesday, the state budget enterprise RSSI signed an agreement with the Port of Gdansk to create a grain port. We have a grain port,” the minister said, adding that this is an extremely important event.
He noted that the grain port will improve the transportation of grain, in particular from Ukraine.
The creation of further “solidarity corridors” that would allow the transportation of Ukrainian grain by sea is very important, he explained, while emphasizing that the lack of agricultural supplies to African countries is beneficial to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As reported, on September 15, the European Commission announced that it would not extend restrictions on imports of agricultural products from Ukraine to five neighboring EU countries (Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia) under certain conditions that will help avoid a new sharp increase in supplies.
The restrictions were introduced on May 2 and applied to imports of wheat, rapeseed, sunflower and corn. These five Eastern European EU member states argued that Ukrainian agricultural products, when imported duty-free into the EU, were being deposited in their countries and were harming their local agricultural sectors.
After the restrictions were lifted, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia imposed unilateral bans. Poland expanded the list of banned products to include rapeseed cake and meal, as well as corn bran, wheat flour, and derivatives. Hungary extended the list to 24 commodity items.
Ukraine filed a lawsuit with the WTO, accusing Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia of discriminatory treatment of its agricultural products.
Ukraine is currently negotiating the introduction of a mechanism for licensing the export of Ukrainian agricultural products with mandatory verification in each of the five countries.
