22 million tons of food have been blocked in Ukrainian ports, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in Kyiv on Saturday after meeting with Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa.
“Russia has blocked all maritime opportunities to export food products – our grain, barley, sunflower. 22 million tons have been blocked by the Russian Federation, “he said.
“And, to be honest, they are stealing slowly. Grain is taken out of ports and somewhere. We know what “somewhere” is, “Zelensky said.
According to him, Ukraine “works at the level of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At the level of conscience, it is impossible to work with these countries, so we work differently. ”
Zelensky noted that “it can be unblocked in different ways. One of them is military. That is why we are asking our partners for such requests for appropriate weapons, and Portugal is no exception. “
On Saturday, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a bill approved by the Congress to appropriate $40 billion for Ukraine, the White House press service has reported.
“On Saturday, May 21, 2022, the President signed into law H.R. 7691, the “Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2022,” the press service said in a statement posted on the White House’s official website.
“Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2022” provides supplemental emergency appropriations for fiscal year 2022 to Federal agencies to respond to the situation in, and for assistance to, Ukraine.
At a meeting on Friday, the Ukrainian government approved the composition of the delegation to begin negotiations with the European Union on an agreement on road freight transport between Ukraine and the EU, said Prime Minister Denis Shmygal.
“This means the maximum possible liberalization in this matter and in the issue of access to European ports,” he said, opening the meeting.
The Prime Minister pointed out that, according to the operative data of the State Customs Service, the total value of goods exported from Ukraine in April amounted to $ 2.7 billion, which is twice lower than in April 2021.
“Every day the government team works to increase the capacity of our western border. We are building a new logistics system. We are opening new checkpoints, green corridors. We have simplified customs as much as possible so that businesses can export products freely and quickly,” Shmygal said.
Canada, which has allocated 1 billion Canadian dollars (about $780 million at the current exchange rate) of financial support to Ukraine in its next budget, remains the only country that intends to use a special account administered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to send this assistance.
“The account allows donors to channel further support to Ukraine securely, through loans or grants, using our fiduciary infrastructure. Canada has a billion in its upcoming budget. I am not aware of any other pledges or commitments at this time. We will keep you posted,” he said. IMF Representative Gerry Rice at a traditional briefing in Washington on Thursday.
When asked about the Fund’s exchange rate advice, in particular the advisability of adjusting the fixed rate policy chosen at the start of the war, the IMF spokesperson said that he “is not aware of any specific advice that we have given regarding the adjustment at this time.”
Rice also said that the Fund remains in very close contact with the Ukrainian authorities, almost daily, in particular, a few days ago there was another conversation between IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
As reported, on February 24, the National Bank suspended the work of the foreign exchange market of Ukraine, except for the sale of foreign currency, and fixed the exchange rate at the official level of that day – UAH 29.2549/$1, which led to the emergence of a “black” market, where in the first days the exchange rate reached 39-40 UAH/$1. Later, the regulator allowed the sale of currency in branches that are under the threat of capture by the invaders, by decision of their leadership.
The NBU made the next liberalization step on April 15, when it granted banks and non-banking financial institutions the right to sell cash currency throughout the country at a rate not higher than “official plus 10%”, but within the volume of the purchased currency. As a result, many banks declared the possibility of selling foreign currency at the maximum possible rate of UAH 32.17-32.18/$1 and at the same time raised the purchase rate closer to the selling rate. However, according to market participants, it is extremely difficult to freely officially buy cash currency. Nevertheless, the “black” market reacted with a slight strengthening of the hryvnia, as a result of which the dollar exchange rate on it was only about 2% higher. Now this difference has increased to about 14%.
Head of the State Archival Service of Ukraine Anatoliy Khromov states that today in Ukraine, a maximum of 5% of archival documents have been digitized.
“In archival terms, we are one of the largest countries in Europe. We have 86 million storage units only, most often these are cases on paper, which, according to the regulations, can contain up to 250 sheets, that is, billions of copies,” Khromov said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
According to him, the pace of digitization in previous periods, unfortunately, was quite low, but now the agency has achieved that last year the pace of digitization increased by 500%.
“But even this is quite small, because earlier the pace was such that it would take thousands of years to fully digitize. Therefore, I am not ready to say for sure, but as of now, a maximum of 5% of documents have been digitized,” the head of the Archive said.
Khromov said that the agency is trying to attract international partners, because there is no state digitization program and has never existed.
“We planned that together with our partners we could digitize all key documents of interest to people in the future for seven-ten years: metric records, books of civil registration offices, population censuses. It would be quite real. And now, even despite the war, we are signing such agreements because we believe that as soon as it becomes safe in the region, we can continue these digital projects,” he concluded.
As reported, in May, Ukrainian State Archival Service presented an interarchive search portal, which allows access through a single window to digital archive resources. At the moment, the digital resources of three central state archives of Ukraine are presented on the platform, together they are almost 1.5 million full-text scanned copies of archival documents, to which a full-fledged search engine has been created. In particular, we are talking about the Central State Archive of the Supreme Authorities and Administration of Ukraine, the Central State Archive of Public Associations of Ukraine, the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine.
JSC Ukrzaliznytsia notes a number of problems on the part of the transport system of European countries, which prevent increasing the volume of cargo transportation by rail from Ukraine to Europe.
“The set of technical problems is that the transport system of European countries is not technically ready to transport such large volumes. It needs additional rolling stock: wagons and locomotives,” Deputy Director of the Department of Commercial Work at Ukrzaliznytsia Valeriy Tkachev said at the “Economics of War: May Review and Focus on Infrastructure” conference.
According to him, today Ukrzaliznytsia transports cargo using only 2,000 wagons, or about 130,000 tonnes of cargo per day at the western border crossings, which is approximately equal to 3.8 million tonnes of cargo per month. At the same time, Ukrzaliznytsia’s own capacities allow using 3,422 railcars, or 220,000 tonnes per day.
According to the Ukrainian railway operator, the root of the problem is that the railway infrastructure of Ukraine and Europe is significantly different in gauge. And for the exchange of goods between these two infrastructures, there are only two ways: to reload at the border or to change the wagon bogie. At the same time, Ukrzaliznytsia said that there are not enough transshipment terminals.
“Besides, the most acute problem is the number of wagons on 1,435 mm European gauge track. That is, we, for our part, can transport a much larger volume of cargo, but there is a problem either with a lack of transshipment capacity, or a problem of the availability of European wagons,” Tkachev said.
He also said that there is another technical problem, which is that the infrastructure of European countries has a limited capacity, since it was built for the needs of intra-European transport.
“In Europe, the share of railway transportation of the overall structure of the transport system is 15-35%, while we have 65%. Therefore, the European infrastructure was not initially designed for such large volumes of cargo transportation by rail,” he said.
According to Tkachev, the growth rate of railway transportation is also affected by organizational issues of business, which for many years has been building supply chains towards ports and which now needs to reorient towards border railway crossings.
“Now we have already accumulated 34,000 wagons in the network, which are loaded and are waiting to cross the border,” Tkachev said.
In addition, the presence of a number of red tape procedures at the border, in particular, repetitive procedures of phytosanitary and veterinary control, significantly slows down cargo transportation.
At the same time, the growth in railway transportation continues to recover: according to Tkachev, Ukrzaliznytsia transported 416,000 tonnes of agricultural products in March, and 638,000 tonnes in April. The goal of Ukrzaliznytsia is to reach 1-1.5 million tonnes per month of export of grain products.
