Ukraine’s Minister of Infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov has said that Russia still has instruments for artificially limiting the capacity of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which established a humanitarian maritime corridor to allow ships to export grain and other foodstuffs from Ukraine, despite the extension of the initiative for 120 days, the CFTS portal reports.
He emphasized that 77 ships are currently waiting for inspection in Turkey, the ports of Greater Odesa are operating at less than 50% of their capacity, and the price of grain is increasing with every new Russian blackmail.
"We had the experience of conducting 40 inspections per day. There are currently five times fewer inspections per day because of the Russian Federation’s position. The Grain Initiative allowed the export of 4.2 million tons of grain in October, but we cannot reach 3 million tons in November. Meanwhile, we are technically capable of reaching 6 million tons per month," Kubrakov said.
The minister of infrastructure noted that farmers and shipowners are incurring losses because of the artificial delays, as a result of which the most vulnerable sections of the population and countries on the verge of starvation lose.
According to him, One day of downtime costs at least USD 30,000.
Vessels currently wait 2-5 weeks for inspection.
"Strategically, we should achieve not only the speeding up of inspections on the Bosporus but also the inclusion of the Mykolaiv ports in the Grain Initiative and the extension of the deal for at least one year. Regarding the inclusion of the Mykolaiv ports in the Grain Initiative, we have officially sent a proposal to consider changes to the initiative to the United Nations and Turkey," he said.
