Our state must look for ways to minimize the consequences of blocking the border
Polish farmers were unable to reach an agreement with the government, so the blocking of the Ukrainian-Polish border will continue indefinitely. According to local media, this could last up to several weeks or until early May. Chairman of the Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy Daniil Getmantsev explained how this will hit the budget of Ukraine and what ways to minimize the consequences.
Of course, this causes damage and inconvenience to Ukrainian business, and these “performances” from the Polish border cost the budget at least 8 billion UAH. per month only shortfalls from customs. In fact, we are talking about much larger losses — after all, this is a drop to a catastrophically low level of freight turnover of transport involved in the Polish direction, delays and increased prices for the supply of final consumer goods to Ukrainian consumers, and raw materials, components, materials to our manufacturers, this is in in turn, entails the impossibility of timely execution of contracts with foreign counterparties, failures in the organization of production, and much more.
He emphasized that our state must look for ways to minimize the consequences of blocking the border:
- expansion of Black Sea logistics. After the restoration of the sea grain corridor, we have shipped more than 30 million tons of cargo by sea from the ports of Greater Odessa, heading to almost four dozen countries of the world. More than half of the ships (51.2%) traveling to and from Odessa fly the flags of Greece and Turkey. High-level negotiations that took place this week with the leadership of both states, which, among other things, related to the issue of transporting Ukrainian products, give hope that these volumes can be increased;
- accelerating the development of the Danube cluster. Over the past month, more than 2 million tons of products were handled there, and if we compare cargo turnover with 2021, we have an increase of more than 600%. And most importantly, there are prospects for its increase, because, according to Government estimates, the investment potential of the cluster in terms of infrastructure development is about $1 billion;
- a task related to the previous one – the development of the Ukrainian Danube Shipping Company. Already, UDP is ready to offer a fleet with a deadweight of 432.6 thousand tons and 4.3 million tons of transportation capacity per year. However, there are already plans to modernize the company’s fleet, build large-capacity SLG barges using old lantern ships, open additional commercial routes (we saw some good developments in the company back in mid-2022, when the first draft of the Ukraine Recovery Plan was being prepared);
- optimization of the European Union’s «Paths of Solidarity» program. If Polish friends consider the transit of Ukrainian products undesirable, unnecessary or harmful, we need, together with our European partners, to redirect funding and work to more promising transport directions, in particular through Romania and Moldova. There, first of all, open new and expand the capabilities of existing checkpoints , offer non-standard digital solutions that will speed up border crossing, build the necessary infrastructure (roads, bridges), etc.