THE BUSINESS OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE
THE BUSINESS OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE
The United Nations expects a "big uptick" in ships wanting to export Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea after transit procedures were agreed, and a goal of two to five million tonnes a month is "achievable," a senior UN official has said.
Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the UN agreed on transit procedures on 8th August for a deal struck in July to resume Ukraine Black Sea grain and fertiliser exports. The procedures include a 10-nautical-mile (18.5-km) protection zone for ships.
"We're expecting to see a big uptick in applications for transit," said Frederick Kenney, interim UN Coordinator at the Joint Coordination Centre in Istanbul, Turkey, which oversees the deal.
"The goal of getting between two and five [million] metric tonnes is achievable," he told reporters, referring to monthly exports.
The first 12 ships to leave the three Black Sea ports designated by the agreement were carrying 370,000 tonnes of corn and foodstuffs, according to Kenney.
The UN has stressed that the export deal is a commercial — not humanitarian — operation that will be driven by the market. All ships are required to be inspected to allay Russian concerns they could be used to smuggle weapons into Ukraine.
The aim of the deal is to help ease a global food crisis that the UN says was worsened by Russia's war in Ukraine and has pushed tens of millions more people into hunger. Ukraine and Russia are both major wheat exporters.
Kenney said the current priority was to free up pier space at the three ports covered by the deal — Odesa, Chornomorsk and Yuzhny — so new ships could come in and load cargo.
The first ship carrying Ukrainian wheat to be exported under a UN-brokered deal arrived in Istanbul on Sunday, the Joint Coordination Centre based in the Turkish city, said.
The Belize-flagged vessel is the first to carry wheat from Ukraine through the Black Sea since Russia's invasion. The Sormovsky was loaded with 3,050 mt of wheat and had left Ukraine's port of Chornomorsk on Friday.
A total of 18 ships have now departed from Ukraine over the past two weeks, following the deal with Russia to allow a resumption of grain exports from Ukraine's Black Sea ports, after they were stalled for five months due to the war.
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