Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has called on French business to invest in the Ukrainian food industry.
Speaking by video link at the “Solidarity with the Ukrainian People” conference in Paris on Tuesday, Zelensky recalled that this year “through joint efforts we managed to stop the unfolding of the global food crisis.”
“We have already exported more than 13 million tons of grain. Thanks to our Grain from Ukraine initiative, we will help the poorest countries,” he said.
“But we also send humanitarian cargo to export, mostly raw materials, and we can send processed products. Right now there is a need to build a whole industry that will be export-oriented and definitely have consumers, and definitely give profit,” Zelensky said.
It would be right, he said, “if French business has already assessed the prospects and came to Ukraine. The same is in the energy, machine building, defense industry, transport and other industries.
Sugar production in Ukraine as of December 17 amounted to 1.25 million tonnes (more by 110,000 tonnes for the period on December 3-17), in general, 8.87 million tonnes of sugar beet (more by 720,000 tonnes) were processed, according to the website of the Ukrtsukor National Association of Sugar Producers.
According to the data on the website of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, as of December 17, Ukrainian agrarians harvested 10.53 million tonnes of sugar beet (98.8% of the forecast) with a yield of 469.7 centners/ha.
Thus, at the moment, 84.2% of the sugar beet harvested in the current season has been processed.
