Ukraine to request grain agreement extension for a year, while ‎expanding it to other ports

A senior Ukrainian official said today, Wednesday, that his country will ask Turkey and the United Nations this week to start talks on an agreement to export grain through the Black Sea, with the aim of extending it for at least one year, to include the ports of Mykolaiv.

According to Reuters, the Black Sea Grain Export Initiative, which was mediated by the United Nations and Turkey last July, made it possible to export grain from three Ukrainian ports. The agreement was extended in November and will expire on March 18, unless an agreement is reached to extend it

“We will present a formal proposal this week regarding the need to work on extending (the agreement),” Yury Vaskov, Ukraine’s deputy minister for infrastructure, said in an interview.

He stated that the exact date for the talks, which previously took place in Turkey, has not yet been set

“We will ask … to extend it not only for a period of 120 days, but for at least one year, because the Ukrainian and global agricultural market needs to be able to plan these volumes (of exports) in the long term,” Vaskov said.

He added that Ukraine will insist on increasing the number of inspection teams “in order to eliminate the accumulation of ships awaiting inspections.”

Ukraine repeatedly accuses Russia of delaying inspections of ships carrying Ukrainian agricultural commodities, which leads to lower shipments and traders incurring losses.

Russia denies the accusations and says it is fulfilling all its obligations under the grain export agreement

Vaskov said that the situation regarding inspections has not changed since November, and that the Russian side has three inspection teams

He continued, “There is no positive momentum. Meanwhile, the United Nations, Turkey and Ukraine are ready to conduct 40 inspections per day if necessary. This is needed, as there are about 140 ships awaiting inspection.”

Ukraine exports about three million tons of agricultural products per month under the agreement, but Vaskov said that Ukraine is able to export six million tons per month from the ports of the Odessa region, and to increase it to eight million tons if the ports of Mykolaiv join the initiative.

Vaskov added that the ports of Mykolaiv, from which 35 percent of Ukrainian food was exported before the Russian invasion, are ready to join the initiative and will need a maximum of two weeks to start their operations.

“If the initiative includes (Mykolaiv) ports, there will be an obligation not to attack ships carrying agricultural products,” he said.