Poland estimates the costs of expanding Ukrainian grain transit at around one billion euros

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Poland presented to the bodies of the European Union (EU) the costs of infrastructure investments enabling Ukrainian grain exports after Moscow shut down the Black Sea Corridor on July 17. However, the transit of Ukrainian agricultural products is also carried out through Poland. According to the documents available to the Polish state news agency (PAP), Poland estimates the costs of the investments necessary to expand the transit of Ukrainian agricultural products crossing the Polish-Ukrainian border at around one billion euros. Of this, around 500 million euros would be needed to expand truck terminals operating at road border crossings, as well as to develop the railway infrastructure of the city of Przemysl, close to the Ukrainian border. An additional 500 million euros would be allocated, for example, to the modernization of the Polish-Ukrainian railway border crossings, the construction of new truck terminals, and the establishment of infrastructure for the control of goods traffic.

Andrzej Sados, Poland’s Permanent Representative to the EU, confirmed the mentioned data to the PAP news agency

He said: Warsaw wants to expand the transit of Ukrainian grain abroad, especially to Africa, for a year and a half. “However, this requires investments, and we will repeatedly submit to the European Commission our specific requests aimed at increasing the capacity of the infrastructure,” declared the diplomat.

According to the data presented earlier by Sados, Poland registered a record high transit traffic from Ukraine in May and June

In June, a total of more than 260,000 tons of wheat and corn were transported through Poland, which is more than twice the amount in March. Among other things, Poland spent 63 million euros – mostly from its own national resources – for the infrastructural modernization of railway border crossings, but EU support is needed for further capacity expansion – the Polish diplomat emphasized. Poland, which handles the transit of Ukrainian grain, is also one of the five Central European countries in which the import ban on grain from Ukraine is valid. The affected countries would like the EU to extend the current ban, which is scheduled to expire on September 15, at least until the end of the year.

MTI