According to a senior Ukrainian official, the country’s attempts to promote grain exports are presently concentrated on speeding up ship inspections rather than expanding the campaign to new ports, Al Jazeera reports.
In July, three important Ukrainian Black Sea ports in the Odesa area were unblocked as part of a Moscow and Kyiv agreement mediated by the UN and Turkey.
According to the agreement, joint teams in the Bosphorus examine all ships.
However, Kyiv accuses Moscow of conducting inspections slowly, which results in delays of several weeks and decreases the volume of grain exports from Ukraine that is available.
“Ukraine focuses on normalizing inspections rather than opening new ports,” the senior Ukrainian official said. “Why open the port of Mykolaiv if, at the current rate of exports, we can close half of the ports of Odesa, which are already open?”
Previously, the Black Sea grain deal that aimed to ease global food shortages by enabling agricultural exports from Ukraine’s southern Black Sea ports was extended for 120 days.
By enabling shipments to continue from three ports in Ukraine, a significant producer of grains and oilseeds, the deal, first struck in July, created a secured maritime transit corridor and was intended to ease global food shortages.
The UN, which Moscow views as essential to the deal, is also “totally committed to reducing the remaining hurdles to exporting food and fertilizers from the Russian Federation,” according to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
The Black Sea grain agreement will remain in place for an additional 120 days beginning on November 18 according to the Russian foreign ministry.
