By Pavel Polityuk Alexander Tanas<\/p>\n
KYIV\/CHISINAU, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Ukraine is considering shipping grain by rail through Moldova as a more secure export option than by sea and has asked \u200cauthorities in Chisinau for a low freight tariff, sources in both countries said on Monday.<\/p>\n
Exports \u200cfrom Ukrainian ports by way of the Black Sea, including a “security corridor” taking them to Romania, have run up against increased Russian \u200battacks on Ukrainian shipping and port infrastructure in recent months.<\/p>\n
Sources in Ukraine and Moldova have said that Kyiv would like to transport its grain via Moldova to the Romanian port of Constan\u021ba with a 50% discount of the nominal rate.<\/p>\n
“We are currently gathering information on potential volumes from interested shippers. The information-gathering process has \u200cnot yet been completed,” a senior \u2060Ukrainian industry official told Reuters.<\/p>\n
A source with Moldovan Railways said Ukraine had sought the 50% discount during discussions. Moldova, he said, had countered with a proposal for \u2060Ukraine to provide guarantees of volumes of Ukrainian grain to be transported.<\/p>\n
“At this time, the two sides are discussing a time frame and volumes of transit of Ukrainian grain through Moldova to the (Romanian) port of Constanta,” the \u200bsource said.<\/p>\n
The \u200bformer head of Moldovan Railways, Oleg Tofilat, told Reuters \u200bthat a transit rail corridor through Moldova \u200ccould carry 4.5 million metric tons annually.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian estimates say that a working corridor could provide for 10% of the country’s exports. Moldova had already provided rail transport for Ukrainian grain in 2022-2023.<\/p>\n
The need for a rail route has arisen in connection with Russian attacks on the Odesa port hub.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi told Reuters earlier on Monday that the ministry had lowered its grain export forecast for the 2026\u201327 \u200cseason to 38 million\u201340 million metric tons from the \u200bpreviously expected 43 million tons, due to Russian attacks on ports.<\/p>\n
The \u200blower grain export forecast underscores the damage \u200bthe attacks are inflicting on a country that ships more than 90% of \u200cits grain exports through seaports. Agricultural products account \u200bfor the largest share of \u200bUkraine’s overall exports.<\/p>\n
Moldovan Prime Minister Vasile Tofan said on Monday that his country should not lose the opportunity to earn millions of euros in transit revenue from Ukrainian grain cargos. He \u200bdismissed suggestions by Moldovan farm groups \u200cthat the price of Ukrainian grain would undercut their own produce.<\/p>\n
“Let’s not look for enemies \u200bin places where there are none,” he told Moldovan television.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk and Alexander \u200bTanas; Writing by Ron Popeski; Editing by Alistair Bell)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Pavel Polityuk Alexander Tanas KYIV\/CHISINAU, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Ukraine is considering shipping grain by rail through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7013,7009,55,9511,9512,4287,9513,26],"class_list":["post-26672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-grain-export","tag-grain-exports","tag-moldova","tag-moldovan-railways","tag-rail-corridor","tag-rail-transport","tag-shipping-grain","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}