The Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure intends to propose a public debate on a draft law on river ports within a few months, the CFTS correspondent reports. Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Dmytro Demydovych announced this at a roundtable with the participation of experts and journalists in Odessa.
Demydovych expressed the conviction that such a document is necessary to determine the legal "rules of the game" for shipping and cargo handling on rivers, as was done in the law on seaports of Ukraine. "We have a powerful river, but the cargo turnover on it has been about 6 million tons in recent years, meaning that its potential is almost never realized. Things turned out this way because the legal rights of entities to operate from berths on the river have not been established,” he said.
He stressed that adoption of the law will result in more companies actively using the river and constructing their transshipment facilities on it. "Even if the law will not resolve all the necessary issues because there is still an external environment that defines a lot of the working conditions on the river - for example, competitive rates for transportation by road or rail, etc. - the main thing is to give this law the right philosophy to ensure that it is capable of changing something for the better,” said Demydovych.
According to Demydovych, the drafting of this law, which is being done jointly with specialists from shipping companies, lawyers, and experts, will soon be completed, and it will be ready for approval by May 1 after a public hearing.
As reported, the Ministry of Infrastructure has prepared a program for development of inland water transport. The program provides for spending a projected UAH 958.16 million (including UAH 725.96 million from the state budget) on river transport infrastructure in the period of 2014-2021.
