Rail transportation of Ukrainian grain for export at its lowest in past 6 months

MOSCOW. May 26 (Interfax) - JSC Ukrainian Railways transported 973,160 tonnes of grain for export between May 1 and May 23, which is the lowest amount over the past six months, the company's deputy director of commerce Valery Tkachev said at a meeting with agricultural business representatives on Thursday.

"We transported more than 3 million tonnes in certain months after the start of the crisis. Today's amount is the lowest over the past six months or even more," Ukrainian media quoted Tkachev as saying.

He blamed the decrease in the amount of grain shipments, among other reasons, for the restrictions imposed by five neighboring countries on agricultural imports from Ukraine on April 17.

A total of 719,956 tonnes of grain have been shipped to ports and 253,206 to crossings on Ukraine's western border since the beginning of May, Tkachev said. It was a normal situation earlier when 2 million tonnes of grain or more were shipped to ports and 1 million tonnes to crossing points on the western border, he said.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative was renewed last Friday, a circumstance which has already prompted an upsurge in activity at the Greater Odessa ports and an intensification of rail traffic toward the ports, Tkachev said. If there were 900 cars in the rail network as of the beginning of the week, their number has now reached 1,512. However, there are no cars on the tracks bound for the Yuzhny port.

An Odessa railway representative, who attended the meeting, said that 14 vessels have been inspected since last Friday, including eight bound for the Odessa port and six heading to the Chernomorsk port. There are currently six vessels, two for the Odessa port and four for the Chernomorsk port, in the inspection zone. Twelve vessels were registered for inspection on Thursday, and 36 more are awaiting registration.

Due to the restrictions imposed on April 17, the transfer of shipments in the direction of crossings on Ukraine's western border decreased by 4%, or 65 cars per day for all shipments. This figure stood at 1,703 cars per day at the beginning of May. Up to 2,000 cars were transferred per day earlier, Tkachev said. The decrease is due to the fact that the amount of transferred grain shipments has almost halved and the transfer of ore cargoes in the direction of Poland has declined, and has also declined insignificantly in the direction of Slovakia. The average daily transfer of grain shipments at checkpoints on Ukraine's western border stands at 330 cars, as compared to 650-670 cars per day earlier, Tkachev said.

There are no queues of grain cars on the tracks in the direction Ukraine's western border, he said, adding that 10,859 cars are heading to these border crossings, including 1,446 cars with grain, 751 with seed meal, and 381 with sunflower oil. They will have to wait for 5-7 days to cross the border.

Earlier, the European Commission banned the import of wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seed from Ukraine to Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia from May 2 to June 5, 2023. These "exceptional and temporary preventive measures" are necessary as storage facilities are overfilled and as there are logistics bottlenecks in these five EU member states, the commission said. The transit via these five countries to the rest of the EU or other countries should continue unimpeded, but, in actual fact, the restrictions are still being applied.