Ukrainians are ready to invest in the construction of a railway to the ports of Gdańsk and Klaipeda

The Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, Mykola Solsky, emphasized that domestic investors are ready to finance the construction of a wide railway track from the border with Ukraine to the ports of Gdansk in Poland and Klaipeda in Lithuania. This should facilitate the delivery of Ukrainian grain and, by the way, give Poland the opportunity to earn from its transit. After all, if such a road is built to Gdańsk, Ukrainian companies will guarantee the appropriate scale of transportation along this route for 10 years in the future.

In fact, this will give Poland the opportunity to build factories for the processing of Ukrainian grain on its own coast and to export ready-made products. As for logistics, there are many times more wagons for transporting grain in Ukraine than in Europe as a whole. That is why it is more logical for Ukrainian businessmen to build a 1,520 mm track from the Ukrainian border to the Polish coast, rather than to buy wagons on the European standard track.

In order to implement this project, the approval of the simplified procedure for such investment by the Polish Parliament is currently required. This simplified procedure has already been adopted in Poland for the construction of an oil port or a gas terminal.

And currently, without waiting for a new track, Ukraine has already resumed container transportation. On April 3 this year, the first container ship after the full-scale Russian invasion passed by sea to one of the ports of the Odesa region. The first ship to pass the route was the "T Mare" under the flag of Panama. This is not a full-fledged specialized ship, but a so-called feeder, which makes charter flights between Constanta and the ports of Greater Odessa. Until now, container transportation was carried out in a limited volume through the Danube ports of the Odesa region, but now it is expected that it will increase significantly.

We will remind that during the 7 months of operation of the Ukrainian maritime corridor, 33.8 million tons of cargo were exported. This is more than was exported during the year of operation of the grain corridor. As the Deputy Prime Minister for Reconstruction - Minister of Community Development, Territories and Infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov reported, since the beginning of the corridor's operation, 1,140 ships have passed through it, exporting goods to 40 countries. In fact, Ukraine reached almost the pre-war volume of exports from the ports of Great Odesa and introduced a much more efficient logistics route without the participation of the aggressor state, continuing to be the guarantor of the world's food security. Currently, the Government plans to attract private investors to modernize the ports of Ukraine. They will be reimbursed by port fees. As stated in the explanation to the draft resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, before the Russian Federation's full-scale war against Ukraine, the need for funding of the "Ukrainian Sea Ports Administration" reached UAH 12 billion for four years. The money was needed for the repair of 48 piers. The administration concluded contracts related to a number of construction projects, but due to lack of funds, it was unable to implement even a part of these projects. Currently, in connection with the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, there is a problem of insufficient financing of the maritime industry, including in connection with an imperfect fiscal policy.