Denis Marchuk, deputy head of the All-Ukrainian Agrarian Council, expressed this view in comments to UNIAN. He noted that the situation is complicated by grain stocks from last year’s harvest.
“Carryover stocks place an additional burden on farmers because they remain in storage at grain elevators. In effect, they take up space that could be used for the new harvest, which results in additional storage costs for producers and makes the storage process more expensive. And the new harvest is forecast to be no worse than last year’s. The situation is indeed problematic and affects the operation of port infrastructure. Our sales volumes have actually decreased due to frequent attacks on ports. Although the ports have not stopped operating—they are still functioning—shipments are not as fast. “This places an additional burden on every link in the supply chain,” the expert notes.
While the situation cannot yet be described as critical, it could become so under a pessimistic scenario. “We are currently discussing the possibility of attracting international funds—funds, so to speak, for the restoration of infrastructure that is being destroyed in the ports, because both grain elevators and transshipment facilities are being destroyed there. Losses at the ports—previously estimated at $1.5 billion—are now significantly higher. And businesses simply have no practical ability to recover on their own,” reports Marchuk.
