The Romanian government in cooperation with Moldovan authorities will build a pontoon bridge across the Prut border river to improve the transportation of cargo from Ukraine, mainly grain, according to the website of Polish publication Gospodarka Morska, citing Irinel Scriosteanu, state secretary of the Romanian Transport Ministry.
According to Romanian official, the new pontoon crossing will be built at the place where until 1944 there was a bridge between Bumbata village (Bumbata, Romania) and Leova city (Leova, Moldova), later destroyed by Soviet Red Army troops.
Scriosteanu said the pontoon bridge would be used for both passenger and freight traffic.
“In recent months, the Romanian and Moldovan governments have announced a number of logistics projects to improve the transportation of goods from Ukraine, especially grain. Because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Romanian port of Constanta is important for the shipment of grain from this country through the Black Sea,” the Polish edition concluded.
As reported, Romania became the largest importer of Ukrainian grain crops in 2022 because of the Russian aggression, although in 2021 it was not even in the top 20 importers. Its share was 13.6% of the total value of Ukrainian supplies of this commodity group abroad. During the year, this country increased the volume of imports from Ukriane by 690 times compared to 2021 – up to $1.24 billion from $1.8 million.
Ukrzaliznytsia JSC (UZ) is negotiating with the Romanian side to implement a project that will extend the connection from the recently opened Valia-Visheului station to major cities in Romania, and continues to develop the connection between Ukrainian regional centers and international destinations, UZ board member Alexander Pertsovsky told Interfax-Ukraine Agency.
“We continue to develop international connections. We have already made the first steps to connect western Ukraine with Romania. So far it is one small station Valya-Visheului, but we are working with the Romanian side to extend messages to major cities on the Romanian side,” – said Pertsovsky.
According to him, there is a wide track (1520 mm) in this direction, on which ordinary Ukrainian cars will be able to pass.
As previously reported, last year UZ repaired sections Rakhiv – Dilove – Valya Visheului (19.2 km of track, 12 bridges), and also held repairs of the station in Rakhiv. This allowed to bring back to life a section of the railroad, which has not functioned since 2011, and to run trains number 755/756 and number 753/754 Rakhiv-Valya-Visheului-Rakhiv. Also, the section at the border with Romania, Teresva – border, which had not functioned since 2007, was repaired. There are also two international crossings between Ukraine and Romania, through which only freight traffic is carried out: Vadul-Siret-Dornesti and Dyakovo-Halmeu.
In general, due to active launching of new international communications, the number of passengers traveling in international directions from Ukraine has increased by 9 times, said Pertsovskyi, without specifying absolute numbers.
He pointed out that the most popular destination is Poland. Every day, UZ receives up to 2 thousand or more requests to buy tickets for the train Kyiv-Warsaw. As reported, to provide more seats, on February 19, UZ launched a service that allows people from Kharkiv to go to Kyiv and Kyiv-Warsaw train to Helm, where passengers can arrive in Warsaw at the same time as the passengers of direct train Kyiv-Warsaw with an interchange. Now there are 8 cars with the occupancy of 95%. In the future there may be up to 10 of them. Also on February 19 UZ started one more train Kharkiv-Peremyshl.
According to Pertsovsky, UZ will continue to develop the direction of communication of the regions in the direction of international destinations.
“We will continue to work with the Polish direction. We see that the routes connecting the same Kharkiv work effectively. We will see to what extent Dnipro, Odessa… Because since the beginning of the war we have got communication with Europe not only the capital, but also Dnipro, Zaporozhye, Odessa, Vinnitsa. And we look at the demand in these directions to assess plans for further development”, – said a member of the board of UZ.
The leaders of Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia have supported the “Grain from Ukraine” initiative announced by the president of Ukraine and announced further efforts to increase existing and create new transit corridors for the export of Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products.
“Since the beginning of the war, 8.4 million tons of grains and oilseeds from Ukraine have been transited (through Romania) to consumers in the world. We expect transit exports from Ukraine to increase in the coming months,” Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca said in a video message at the international food security summit in Kiev on Saturday.
He noted that Romania has acted very strongly in support of Ukrainian grain exports through Romanian ports and will continue working to increase connectivity between the countries by land and rail, including the recent opening of a new border crossing.
Ciuche also stressed that Romania has and will not back down from supporting Ukraine and Moldova in the energy sphere. “We will not allow Russia to plunge the region into darkness,” he said.
Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said at the summit that Bulgaria has managed to transport about 200,000 tons of grain from Ukraine across the Danube in recent months, and the country intends to continue this transportation project.
“Unfortunately, the loss of power in Ukrainian ports due to Russian shelling has made this process difficult for Bulgarian vessels,” he said.
Radev also said Bulgaria is providing fuel to Ukraine so the country can support the agricultural and transportation sectors.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrea Plenkovic also supported work on new corridors for the supply of Ukrainian products as part of the EU’s Solidarity Routes project.
“Croatia is actively joining, and will attract other ports on the Adriatic and there are opportunities for corridors along the Danube River,” said the Croatian government head.
The three leaders welcomed the extension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative for another 120 days, and the Bulgarian president urged the search for stable long-term solutions.
Ukrainian GlobalLogic, an IT company of the Hitachi group, has announced the acquisition of Fortech, a leading Romanian software development company.
Fortech is headquartered in Cluj-Napoca and is one of the largest digital engineering companies in Romania, GlobalLogic said on Wednesday.
The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Under the agreement, Fortech will continue to operate with its existing leadership and staff as a wholly owned subsidiary of GlobalLogic. The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approval and is expected to close by the end of Calendar Q4, 2022. The transaction will strengthen GlobalLogic’s presence in Europe by opening up access to Romania’s strong talent pool and Blue-Chip’s customer base.
In addition, GlobalLogic has opened an office in Bucharest and is inviting engineers to join the company in Romania.
“Fortech is a leading firm with proven track record and specialization in technology that is needed for digital evolution. This acquisition will further enhance GlobalLogic’s presence in Europe and accelerate our access to the rich technical talent in Romania; it will arm Fortech with the resources and strong backing of GlobalLogic and Hitachi,” Nitesh Banga, President and CEO of GlobalLogic, said.
Fortech was founded in 2003, and it cooperates with more than 1,100 specialists. With offices in four cities in Romania, it provides a full range of digital engineering services including architecture design, software development, DevOps, QA and data analytics. It specializes in Cloud, IOT and SaaS.
The press release states that GlobalLogic’s investment in Fortech is part of the company’s multi-year strategy to increase its value in the European market and help better serve customers around the world.
More than EUR66 million will be allocated under the first Interreg NEXT European cross-border cooperation program for Hungary, Slovakia and Romania’s partnership with Ukraine in health, environment and good governance, the European Commission (EC) announced Friday. “This program is part of the EU’s overall support and unwavering solidarity toward Ukraine. By implementing a cohesion policy, Interreg will help Ukraine and its bordering member states to face common challenges and seize joint opportunities,” said Elisa Ferreira, EC member for cohesion policy and reforms.
The program covers the period of 2021-2027. Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine are expected to work together to ensure equal access to health services and improve the sustainability of their health systems.
The program will support climate change adaptation and disaster risk prevention solutions. The participating countries will cooperate to protect nature, develop “green infrastructure” and tourism.
It is also a question of aligning Ukraine’s norms with EU member states in the area of effective public administration. Relevant projects will promote legal and administrative cooperation to remove common barriers to interaction in border areas, while supporting cooperation between citizens, civil societies and state institutions, according to a communiqué from the European Commission.
CROSS-BORDER COOPERATION, HUNGARY, ROMANIA, SLOVAKIA, UKRAINE
Ukraine, Moldova and Romania have agreed to sign an agreement to increase cross-border capacity to increase electricity trade, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.
“We reached several important agreements today to develop our relations in the energy sector, and our teams will continue to work on their implementation. In particular, we agreed to sign a trilateral intergovernmental agreement on increasing cross-border capacity to increase the volume of electricity trade,” Kuleba said at the meeting. press conference in Odessa on Thursday.
Kuleba drew attention to the fact that the meeting in the format of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Ministers of Energy of Ukraine, Moldova and Romania is taking place for the first time.
“Three of our countries, and immediately foreign ministers and energy ministers. There is a very clear reason and goal for this – we want to build qualitatively new relations in the energy sector between our three countries, and this will be important not only for energy, but also for security and prosperity in our region,” the minister stressed.
Currently, Ukraine exports electricity to Moldova in the amount of about 165 MWh, with a possible maximum of 600 MWh, and to Romania – 150 MWh.
