The MIU announced the lack of funds for the development of inland waterways

The Ministry of Infrastructure has published a Draft Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers on the introduction of the possibility of investment by private companies in the development of inland waterways.

The draft act was developed for the implementation of Art. 10 of the Law “On Inland Waterway Transport”, which comes into force on January 1st.

Currently, there is a problem of insufficient financing of the inland waterway transport industry, including due to the lack of a basic law in the industry for a long time. On December 3rd, 2020, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the IWT Law, which provides for the formation of an enterprise for the maintenance of inland waterways.

Part 3 of Article 12 of the Law provides for the creation of the State Fund of Inland Waterways as part of a special fund of the State Budget of Ukraine.

The draft decree notes that they plan to serve the inland waterways and maintain strategic infrastructure facilities with funds from the said state fund, but there is one “but”.

“Such facilities need modernization, repair, reconstruction and construction, which, in turn, requires significant financial investments in a fairly short period of time. Taking into account the limited financial capabilities of the enterprise for servicing inland waterways, it is necessary to attract investments,” the Ministry said.

Part 4 of Article 12 of the Law provides that the provision of navigation on inland waterways can be carried out by raising investments from companies.

MIU offers the following priority investment areas:

• introduction of innovative energy efficient and environmentally friendly technologies;
• development and modernization of the inland waterway network;
• construction of strategic infrastructure facilities for inland waterway transport;
• increasing the level of safety of navigation;
• development of tourism and sports infrastructure, including international, on inland waterways;
• dredging works;
• compensatory restoration measures for the reproduction of negatively affected natural resources.

Interestingly, the MIU mentions that the country does not yet have a mechanism to compensate for investments in strategic transport facilities, but the National Transport Strategy until 2030 should solve this problem.

Read also: MIU has published a draft order for inland navigation vessels