Whole Europe must unite its efforts and act boldly in order to solve the problem of safe transportation and shipment or Ukrainian grain, Prime Minister of Italy Mario Draghi has said.
“We must do everything possible to not let the situation become dramatic… To avoid… a serious crisis, we must ensure safe transportation of grain. This must not cause a global disaster. For this we must focus on how to organize grain transportation through the Black Sea. Russia, unfortunately, does not make advances. We must fight against this problem bravely and boldly, just like President Zelensky. And we, the Europeans, must act together,” Draghi said during a press conference following a meeting of the leaders of Ukraine, France, Germany, Italy, and Romania in Kyiv on Thursday.
He added that there is some time to solve this problem as “the harvest will be ready mainly in September.”
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has said that the government should speed up the transportation of fuel from European ports to Ukrainian consumers.
“The key task for government members is to speed up the transportation of fuel from European ports to our consumers. The volume of such transportation should increase daily,” Zelensky said in a traditional video message on Saturday.
He said that at present, everything is being done to ensure that the state fulfills all social obligations, despite the budget deficit due to the destruction of the Ukrainian economy by the Russian army.
At a meeting with members of the government on Saturday, Zelensky recalled that the issue of fuel shortage was raised last week. “At the beginning of last week, we agreed that we would resolve the issue this week. The week is ending,” Zelensky said.
In turn, First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economy Yulia Svyrydenko called the main problem – the logistics of receiving fuel for Ukraine in Eastern European ports.
“If you look at imports, over the past five days we have been importing exactly the same amount, even a little more, than we consume. Europe was simply not ready: not even in terms of resources, but in terms of logistics. We have a bottleneck – these are ports, European ports,” she said.
“We have Gdansk, Gdynia, Swinoujscie, Constanta, Burgas – there is a traffic jam. We asked [Foreign Minister] Dmytro Kuleba to get involved already at the international level – to ask for a green corridor for Ukraine in these ports,” Svyrydenko added.
Volumes of cargo transportation in jan- nov 2021, mln tons
The Pivdenny Merchandise Sea Port (formerly Yuzhny, Odesa region), the largest seaport in Ukraine in transshipment volume, in January 2022 increased cargo transshipment by 37.9% compared to January a year earlier, to 5.105 million tonnes.
As reported on the page of the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority (USPA) on Facebook, the largest share was traditionally for ore with 2.274 million tonnes handled (5% more compared to January 2020), grain with 1.269 million tonnes (71.4% more) and coal with 615,000 tonnes (346.9% more).
Export cargo turnover amounted to 3.915 million tonnes (35.1% more), import – 856,000 tonnes (93.1% more), transit reached 331,000 tonnes (8.1% less).
Coastal cargo turnover amounted to 3,000 tonnes.
A total of 4.381 million tonnes of bulk cargo was handled (42.9% more), 360,000 tonnes of liquid cargo (12.8% less) and 364,000 tonnes of general cargo (63.2% more).
Transshipment of containers in the port during the reporting period grew by 51.2% compared to the previous year and amounted to 323,000 tonnes, or 23,582 TEU.
As reported, the Pivdenny Seaport in 2021 cut cargo transshipment by 13.3% compared to 2020, to 53.470 million tonnes.
JSC Ukrzaliznytsia transported 26.118 million tonnes of cargo in January 2022, which is 18% more than in January 2021 (22.093 million tonnes).
Oleksandr Kamyshin, the head of the company board, said on Telegram this indicator of cargo transportation is also higher than in January 2020 (23.915 million tonnes) and January 2019 (24.553 million tonnes).
According to him, the average daily cargo load in January 2022 increased by 15% compared to January 2021 (604,000 tonnes) – up to 694,000 tonnes, which is also higher than the figures for the same period in 2020 (662,000 tonnes), 2019 (656,000 tonnes) and 2018 (691,000 tonnes).
Cargo turnover in January of this year increased by 32% compared to January 2021 (11.994 billion tonne-kilometers) – up to 15.813 billion tonne-kilometers, which is also higher than in January 2020 (12.997 billion tonne-kilometers) and January 2019 (14.906 billion tonne-kilometers).
