Ukraine to sell Danube River Belgorod-Dnestrovsky port at auction, starting price set at $5 mln
MOSCOW. Feb 7 (Interfax) - The State Property Fund (SPF) of Ukraine is due to hold an auction on March 3 to sell the Belgorod-Dnestrovsky seaport with a starting price for the asset set at 187.57 million hryvni, or $5.1 million at today's exchange rate.
"The State Property Fund will hold a privatization auction for the Belgorod-Dnestrovsky seaport. The port has shown significant losses in recent years. Meanwhile, starting from 2022, it has been playing an important role [...] as a logistics center for Danube ports," Ukrainian media outlets quoted SPF head Rustem Umerov as saying in a social media post.
The port has extensive potential in terms of Ukrainian exports but is in need of investments and development, Umerov said.
In 2019-2021, the port's net loss ranged from around 23.5 million to 28.5 million hryvni a year and stood at 2.9 million hryvni in January-September 2022, SPF said.
As reported, the Belgorod-Dnestrovsky port suspended its operation in early spring 2022, but resumed it in April of that year as a transport and logistics center for all nearby Ukrainian ports: the ports of Izmail, Reni and Ust-Dunaisk. The grounds of the transport and logistics center host outdoor cargo warehouses with an area of 180,000 square meters and indoor cargo warehouses with an area of 12,500 square meters, including ramp-access warehouses for train cars, and grain storage facilities. The center provides the whole range of customs services for cargo processing.
The Belgorod-Dnestrovsky port also has a wide-reaching network of railways able to accommodate 60 wagons on standby and an indoor TIR parking area for 200 vehicles.
In May 2022, the center began shipping grain and transshipping iron ore pellets and metal products. In the six months after it resumed operation, the amount of cargo handling by the port increased by 100 times as compared to the same period in 2021. The port received more than 10,000 trucks and shipped 4,000 wagons by rail, thus seriously relieving the burden on the road infrastructure to the Izmail and Reni ports. All products were sent for export.
The Belgorod-Dnestrovsky port specializes in the transshipment of timber, mineral fertilizers, iron ore pellets, metal products, and grain.
Vessels approach the port using an access canal from the sea part of the Dniestr-Tsaregorodskoye estuary 1.5 km long and from the Dniestr-Liman part 14.5 km long. The length of the access canal is 3 km (3.4-4.5 km according to the passport). The only asset complex is located on an area of 64.4 hectares.
SPF earlier sold the integrated asset complex of the Ust-Dunaisk port for 200 million hryvni. The starting price set for the asset tripled during the auction.