Ukrainian agro-council proposes constructing 300-km wide-gauge railway section via Poland for grain exports

MOSCOW. June 3 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian Agro-Council (UAC) has proposed constructing a 300-km wide-gauge railway section via Poland for direct grain deliveries to the port of Klaipeda, Lithuania, in order to avoid reloading wagons at the respective borders with Lithuania and Ukraine, UAC said in a statement.

UAC said that its chairman, Andriy Dykun, had presented the corresponding proposal during a meeting with representatives of the Economic Committee of Lithuania's parliament, the Seimas, in Kyiv.

"There are two requests for our partners on contributing to the unblocking of the [Ukrainian] ports and on assisting in constructing a 300-km [wide-gauge] railway section via Poland for supplying grain directly to the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda. The port would be able to ship 20 million tonnes of agricultural products annually. Full support for the project has been received from the Lithuanian partners," Dykun was quoted as saying in the statement.

According to UAC, the main logistical problem with shipping Ukrainian grain to the port of Klaipeda and other European ports is the non-synchronization of the wide-gauge Ukrainian and Lithuanian railways with the narrow-gauge European railway in Poland, and constructing a narrow-gauge railway in Ukraine would require much time.

During the talks, Lithuania agreed that a 300-km wide-gauge railway section through Poland to Lithuania needs to be constructed in order to avoid wasting time and effort to reload the railcars.

As previously reported, on April 10, Lithuanian Agriculture Minister Kestutis Navickas and Ukrainian Chairman of the Committee on Agrarian Policy and Land Relations, Nikolai Solsky, agreed on Lithuania's providing assistance in order to export agricultural products from Ukraine.