Ukrzaliznytsia posts 9% growth in cargo traffic in July

MOSCOW. Aug 2 (Interfax) - Ukrainian Railways (Ukrzaliznytsia) transported 10.302 million tonnes of cargo in July, up 9.2% from the previous month.

"Both domestic transportation and the transportation of exports and imports have grown. There was no growth only in transit because it is practically non-existent. Meanwhile, the transportation of most key commodities, such as grain, ore, coal, ferrous metal, diesel fuel, building materials and so on, has increased. The transportation of cars, coke, scrap metal, salt and vegetable oil has gone down," the Ukrainian media quoted Ukrzaliznytsia CEO Oleksandr Kamyshin as saying on social media on Monday night.

In his words, Ukrzaliznytsia transported 542,000 tonnes of oil and petroleum products (+12.2%), 2.033 million tonnes of ore (+3.2%), 1.462 million tonnes of grain (+7.2%), and 6.266 million tonnes of other cargo (+11.6%) in July 2022.

"True, the growth has been slow. We are doing everything we can to ensure a continuous growth in cargo traffic, first and foremost, the transportation of exports. Hopefully, the unblocking of seaports for grain shipments will allow us to increase grain exports faster," Kamyshin said.

Domestically, Ukrzaliznytsia transported 6.2 million tonnes of cargo in July, or 10.5% more than in June.

The company transported 3.4 million tonnes of exported cargo last month, up 8.7% from the month before.

Additionally, Ukrzaliznytsia transported 598,800 tonnes of imported cargo in July, or 4.5 more than in July 2022.

Meanwhile Fitch Ratings has downgraded Ukrainian railways operator JSC Ukrzaliznytsia's Long-Term Foreign-Currency (LTFC) Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to 'C' from 'CCC' and Local-Currency (LTLC) IDR to 'CCC-' from 'CCC', the rating agency said on its website.