UDS proposes to introduce a discount for railway transportation to ports on the Danube
27.06.2024 - 17:30
The Ukrainian Danube Shipping Company supports the proposal of agricultural producers, who appealed to the Cabinet of Ministers to create equal conditions for the ports of Odesa region and the Danube.
The company joins the call of manufacturers and exporters, and offers to introduce a 30% discount on railway transportation to the Izmail and Reni stations, the UDS reports.
“The Danube route is plus 250 kilometers of roads or 200 kilometers of railway. We lose out to the competition even with the same freight and transshipment rates. A precedent has already been set: the Cabinet of Ministers recently introduced a 30% discount on rail transportation of agricultural products from those territories where hostilities are possible,” the message reads.
The UDS noted that Ukraine should preserve alternative export routes. In particular, we are talking about ports on the Danube.
“We discussed it at all industry events, forums, conferences. They agree with us. We are supported. But in the conditions of critically low prices for grain, producers and traders are not ready to lose earnings (margin) for the sake of reducing risks,” says Dmytro Moskalenko, head of UDS.
Read also: Ukrzaliznytsia can make logistics on the Danube more efficient.
According to him, the discount on railway transportation will justify itself if the condition for its receipt is the transshipment of grain on the state river or sea fleet.
“The state budget compensates for the income not received by the railways at the expense of freight income. UDS today transports Serbian grain, but we have enough fleet to work with Ukrainian products at the same time. Just create the conditions,” urged Dmytro Moskalenko.
He also reminded that other Danube countries are lobbying very hard for the interests of their own carriers, because the entire Danube is suffering from an abnormal drop in rates and cargo flows.
As previously reported by USM, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria believes that in the future the Danube can become an internal river of the European Union.
