Ukrainian infrastructure development ministry plans to boost Reni border crossing's capacity by 7.5-fold

MOSCOW. Oct 18 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian Ministry for the Development of Communities, Territories and Infrastructure is working on a project to increase the throughput capacity of the Reni border crossing from today's 40 to 300 trucks per day, Ukrainian media said, citing Deputy Minister for the Development of Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Sergei Derkach.

"We are ready now to begin designing the Reni crossing point. There is a question, and we will bring it up with the European Union. It is about a road. The existing road that leads to Reni has one lane in each direction. It is certainly not enough. It is necessary to build there at least one lane or two. In this case, we will have a good border crossing," Derkach said.

There is an agreement with Moldova on the development of the Reni-Giurgiulesti-Galati border crossing, he said.

"We want to build a joint border crossing on Ukrainian territory - the Reni border crossing. We are holding negotiations with Romania to place their crossing point in Galati, while the Moldovan part will be exclusively a transit zone. It will considerably cut the time of cargo delivery," Derkach said.

The parties are considering making the new border crossing available to commercial transport only, i.e. that it can be used only by trucks and maybe buses, he said. Private vehicles will be rerouted to the nearest border crossing in order to relieve the burden on the Reni crossing and allow only freight vehicles to use it.

"It [the Reni crossing] currently handles up to 40 vehicles [per day]. It's nothing. And this is in the direction of the ports! As I have already said, up to 680 transport vehicles arrive at our Yagodin [border crossing] on individual days. Our goal is to boost the throughput capacity to at least 300 trucks per day," Derkach said.

EU representatives confirmed at a meeting in Moldova on October 12 that this project is a priority for them and they intend to agree its development in order to make the route to the ports shorter, he said.

The overall amount of investment in all projects in Moldova - the construction of roads and new border crossings and the development of existing ones and related infrastructure - totals 8 billion hryvni today, Derkach said. As for the Reni border crossing, this figure stands at around 5.9 billion hryvni.