River and land grain export from Ukraine covers 50% of pre-war shipment: opinion

Under the effective combination of internal and external logistics, the volume of grain exports from Ukraine by land and river routes has the potential to grow to 2.5 mln t per month, that is up to 50% of the total pre-war export capacity, suggests the deputy head of the All-Ukrainian Agrarian Rada Denys Marchuk, Ukrinform reports.

According to him, Ukraine exported about 200 thou. t of grain in March by land and river routes, in May, under the new conditions, grain export reached 1.74 mln t.

"If the agrarian, transport and customs infrastructure continues to work this way, total export volumes by land and river corridors can be increased to 50% of the total pre-war export volume, which was about 5 mln t," comments Denys Marchuk.

However, Denys Marchuk mentioned a certain factor holding back the passage of Ukrainian grain to the world market along these corridors.

"We see that domestic entrepreneurs and the relevant government services perform quite effectively, but, unfortunately, sometimes our Western partners, whose logistics is not yet ready to handle such large shipments of grain from Ukraine, fail to do so," he explained.

He believes that international partners should understand this problem and respond to the statements of the Ukrainian president, who asks for active assistance in unblocking the Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Otherwise, land corridors will remain the main way of supplying Ukrainian agri-food products to the world market for a long time to come.