© Archyde.com / Valentyn Ogirenko
FILE PHOTO: A cargo ship docked at the Black Sea port of Odessa, Ukraine
kyiv, April 15 (Archyde.com) – Some 1.25 million tonnes of grain and oilseeds remain on commercial ships blocked in Ukrainian seaports due to the Russian invasion and some of the cargo may deteriorate in the near future, Ukraine’s Agriculture Minister said on Friday.
Ukraine used to export almost all of its grains and oilseeds through ports and is now forced to find new routes as its piers are blocked.
Before the war, Ukraine exported 6 million tons of grains and oilseeds a month, but in March shipments dropped to 200,000 tons, Mykola Solskyi told the Ukrayinska Pravda newspaper.
“The (cargo) has not been unloaded and is still on the ships. Currently there are 57 ships with 1.25 million tons of grain and oilseeds,” Solskyi said.
“As for the retention period, I think even the captains themselves, in most cases, don’t know if there are problems with this. They certainly didn’t plan to keep this grain on the ships for a long time,” he added.
Solskyi said that everything depended on the state of the ships’ holds, and if the grain is stored for more than three months, “problems arise and part of the cargo may spoil.”
Ukraine traditionally exports grain to North Africa and the Middle East, and Solskyi said these regions will be forced to spend more money and focus on non-Ukrainian wheat.
He said that importers were already spending more and that the situation with Ukraine’s grain supply might push these countries to build up larger grain reserves and this would also drive up prices.
“That is, even if this story magically ends tomorrow, the wave of high prices will last another 3-5 years, until things settle down, and there will be no balance,” Solskyi added.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing in Spanish by Javier Leira)