Ukrainian agricultural exports by sea drop 20% in Jan 2024 due to New Year holidays, Red Sea crisis - minister

MOSCOW. Jan 18 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian agricultural exports by sea fell 20% in January 2024 due to the New Year holidays and the crisis in the Red Sea, Ukrainian Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Nikolai Solsky said during a common national telethon.

"The pace [of exports] has slightly dropped. We attribute it to objective reasons: these are coincidences related to the New Year. [...] The second point is the problems in the Red Sea," Ukrainian media quoted him as saying.

Certain items of Ukrainian agricultural exports were being shipped across the Red Sea and were bound for Asia, China, other countries and East Africa, Solsky said. "The traffic of ships slowed down significantly there and it had its effect on us," Solsky said, adding that all of this resulted in a 20% drop in the volumes of agricultural products leaving the ports.

"This is not significant, but still large volumes," he said.

Commenting on the difficulties with the export of Ukrainian agricultural products across the Romanian border, Solsky said that the Romanian government is constructively communicating with protesting local farmers.

"There are several associations there that have questions. These are 14 demands. They are almost all related to the domestic market and are associated with certain compensatory measures, changing the rules of different kinds of inspections, subsidies and their distribution, fuel prices and others. There is conditionally one requirement that is indirectly linked to Ukraine, it is additional compensation to farmers for the last year. It is linked to the situation in Ukraine. The word 'Ukraine' is mentioned in the demands," he said.

The Romanian government and farmers have almost reached agreements on all points, Solsky said.

He will have a meeting with his Romanian counterpart on Friday, and he will be able to get more updated information, which will be taken into account.