Geographically, it is most convenient to consider the situation with the ports of Ukraine from east to west, dividing the territory into five zones.
In the article “The Port Problem” I described in detail how, from a state-owned enterprise of the most important industry of the state, officials created a feeding trough and a “profitable place” only for themselves, as well as a testing ground for simulating reforms, for eating up the state’s money, which is collected from sea vessels around the world that are part of our ports.
Below I will describe in detail what kind of cargo flows our ports can expect after the end of this terrible war.
In the meantime, according to tradition, I present data on truck idle time on the western border of Ukraine. In conditions where Polish farmers do not block traffic at all:
- Krakovets - Korczowa - 366 trucks in queue on average 7 days 11 hours 30 minutes.
- Yagodin - Dorogusk - 245 trucks in queue on average 5 days 9 hours 15 minutes.
- Diakovo - Halmeu - 573 trucks in queue on average 5 days 20 hours 45 minutes.
- Uzhgorod - Vyshne Nemetskoe - 910 trucks in queue on average 7 days 6 hours.
- Chop (Tisa) - Zahony - 1224 in queue on average 7 days 12 hours 27 minutes.
They stand with exports, the country needs money to fight, WHAT ARE WE COSTING?
But it seems that our criticism influenced the statists and empty cars are not parked at the border at this time; they are processed in 15-20 minutes.
Geographically, it is most convenient to consider the situation with the ports of Ukraine from east to west, dividing the territory into five zones.
Eastern zone: ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk. In the last pre-war years, the main cargo for Mariupol was ferrous metals (5 million tons out of 6-7 million tons in total), and for Berdyansk - grain (up to 1.5 million tons).
Mariupol. At one time, the city was either at the front line or under occupation by the Nazis for almost 2 years, but it remained undestroyed. Azovstal was partially operational even then. Now this city and its 2 industrial steel giants practically do not exist. The neighbors became concerned.
What to restore on the site of the destruction of Azov Palmyra: a city for tourism, sports and recreation, to create a fish production center for the whole of Ukraine in a warm and shallow sea, or something else should be decided by the residents of the region who will stay and return.
It is only clear that it is no longer possible to restore the cargo port in its previous form, specifically for the export of metal in favor of one monopoly oligarch. Moreover, the world (China and the East - the main consumers of Ukrainian rolled metal) have calmly survived the last few years without our metal and will also survive in the future. And the Chinese, even without us, have already reached almost 1 billion tons of annual steel production. However, we ourselves will critically need the metal that we can still produce at the remaining and de-occupied factories in the form of construction trusses, bridge crossings and construction fittings.
An export port in Mariupol is not needed at all. In addition, without this port, the problem of constant billions of dollars in state expenditures and criminal cases for dredging this port in the style of the current Ukrainian Ports Administration will be solved.
Berdyansk. Even if the Ukrainian economy has excess ferrous metals, scrap metal, pig iron or pipes for export from eastern Ukraine, this port will be enough to fulfill all orders for many years to come. And if the next oligarch has additional volumes, then he himself will install several reloaders at the berths of Berdyansk, deepen the port, etc. will be the least of his investments. The main thing is, again, to decide with the townspeople whether they want dirty, rusty, sawing cars or always smelly trucks to go to the port in the city center and through their entire city again in a continuous stream.
The ports of Crimea under occupation worked for the occupiers and there is no point in predicting their further use now, that is, until complete liberation. Especially after the latest destruction of the largest port oil depot in that region, Feodosia.
Central part: the ports of Olvia, Kherson, Nikolaev and the Dnieper-Bug port, which was recently liberated forever for Ukraine. How much grain will Ukraine collect after the war for export by sea, whether Ukrainian grain should be exported en masse at all, for example to Iran or North Korea, as was done already during the war - these are important questions that must be resolved by the new post-war government.
But an even more important task with grain still remains macroeconomic: why are we exporting raw materials from Ukraine? And we bring back food (meat, sausages, cheeses, pasta, even flour, etc.) made from these, our own, raw materials? We don’t have the capacity, strength, personnel for our own livestock and feed industry? Why isn't it developing?
Moreover, when processing grain within the country, there is no need to focus on food exports at all. At least feed its residents and reduce prices for meat, eggs, cheeses, milk, butter for the Ukrainians themselves. Who today bring the same products from Poland and Italy only because they are made there from Ukrainian raw materials and cost much less than in Ukrainian stores.
Do you need a place-port to import fertilizers for the whole of Ukraine? Excellent, a good port has just become available nearby with the depths of the sea, access roads and not in the city center - the Dnieper-Bug port. Previously, this port worked for nothing and completely for the evil northern neighbor, but now the task for the MIU and USPA should be to prepare this port to receive all imported fertilizers in any container, to negotiate attractive tariffs for rail shipments from this port throughout Ukraine, so that no one wants to transport bulk fertilizers by sea to the ports of the urban centers of Odessa, Kherson, and the Danube, as was the case even before the war.
It is much more expedient for efficient port work to leave 2 estuary ports in this region (Olvia, Dnieper-Bugsky) and not to rape the residents of such large regional centers as Kherson and Nikolaev with noise and city streets that are always broken from port trucks, trembling and constantly breaking from overloads of bridges between central areas of cities (Nikolaev, Kherson).
Moreover, the pre-war mantra of “new jobs in the form of “port handlers” no longer works at all in the modern economy. Neither according to modern salaries, nor according to taxes to local budgets, nor according to the desire of our soldiers to go to work as loaders after the war. It is also necessary to take into account the fact that almost all local taxes from the ports must then be spent on freeing the city from grain dust and endlessly repairing streets in city centers towards the ports.
Ports of greater Odessa: Yuzhny, Odessa, Chernomorsk. Thanks to the “smart and state” management of the Ports Administration, some terminals in these ports are empty and decaying, others compete with each other even within the same harbor. Why was it necessary in the Odessa port, having made a huge government investment in a container terminal right in the center of the city park named after. Shevchenko, allow the construction of another private container terminal 3 km from the first?
At the same time, completely destroying the attractiveness of life in the aristocratic district of Odessa (VMS Boulevard, former Zhvanetsky Boulevard). Moreover, this container berth is located directly on the grain berth. There is no way to explain this other than bribes to officials.
There is no economics in favor of the state here. Why was it necessary to create 2 container ports in the port of Chernomorsk on different shores of the same harbor? Of which one, the private one, is now operating again, while the state terminal has been rusting and empty for years? There is no way to explain this other than bribes to officials. There is no economy here. There is no government policy.
The ports of Yuzhny and Chernomorsk can fully satisfy Ukraine's needs for bulk, container, and general cargo in large volumes. If there suddenly becomes more cargo than the capacity of these ports, Olvia and Dnepro-Bugsky may well help. Of course, if these ports are managed fairly and efficiently. To do this, it is necessary to provide appropriate attractive railway tariffs to these ports and expand highways for trucks.
Why are they “stuffing Odessa” with cargo and ships today, at the same time attracting daily attacks by the Russians on the port infrastructure in the very center of South Palmyra? No one will answer you honestly. And to be honest, the distribution of cargo by port terminals often depends on the ability of the owners of these terminals to pay cash. And pay everywhere.
In Odessa, it turns out, it’s simply more convenient to do this. Maybe that’s why at the Odessa container terminal, worth almost a billion dollars, today grain is poured from bags onto ships? (Yes, yes, container loaders for high-speed work with 40-ton containers today pour grain into the holds of ships). And container ships sail by. Perhaps this is why foreign container carriers open services during the war not at the state berths of the port of Chernomorsk, but call at the berths of a private fishing port 500 meters from the state one.
I will give one pre-war example. A client of the port of Kherson complained to me a couple of years before the war: “I came to the port with the usual cargo - ammonium nitrate in large bags. Good job. The port administration agreed, but on the condition of $1.5 per ton in cash, in addition to normal expenses. Went to a private pier nearby (Pallada in my opinion) and “meant them with their cache.” This is the Port Authority system and it is for such examples that this Administration is needed.
And another example of “work” - even despite the fact that almost every USPA tender is accompanied by criminal cases, a tender worth one billion hryvnia was held in Odessa today. “Repair of part of the overpass from the piers to the exit from the center of Odessa. “To understand, 1 billion UAH is the repair of only part of the overpass, which itself cost 130 million UAH, and the repairs 2 years ago were estimated at 675 million. Now it’s already one billion and with the deadline for completing the repairs by the beginning of the 4th decade of this centuries. Fun tender. It is for such tenders that the current Ukrainian Ports Administration is needed.
What the center of Odessa is turning into is clearly visible from the photo from the Potemkin Stairs. It’s good that, thanks to the “efforts” of the Ukrainian Ports Administration, the broken Odessa Hotel has stood empty and packed for many years. Nobody died.
Apparently they didn’t agree on bribes?
Western zone: Belgorod-Dnestrovsky, Izmail, Ust-Dunaysky, Reni. The State Property Fund has already sold the Belgorod-Dnestrovsky port four times. Sells it as a port for almost nothing. And the port in this estuary has no prospects at all. Why sell? If they sell it for nothing, will they then sue that the port area has been built up with private cottages?
Give the port territory to the city, local authorities, and let the community itself decide what to do on its territory. What land tax, for example, should be established so that the community benefits, let the city residents also decide. It’s no secret that for some reason some of the port territories are not subject to land tax at all (Odessa).
Even occupying 10 km of the best Odessa embankment, Odessa port workers do not pay anything. What would their fair business be like if all these Odessa offshore terminals were subject to a fair land tax? None. We would look for other places for our offshore companies. But no, everyone should be on the job: some are holding auctions for the fourth time, engaged in an outright imitation of government work (SPFU), others are simply stupidly pretending to be smart about salaries from an empty port (USPA).
Give the port area to the city for the development of tourism, sports and recreation, or create a fish and oyster production center there in this almost ice-free and shallow estuary.
Other ports in our west have the same prospects, that is, very vague. Especially if the next government has the courage to change Ukraine’s grain strategy from raw material exports to domestic consumption and use of grain.
2 more points for clarification.
— The port administration requires an immediate change in functions. The administration should not have any commercial functions a priori. Safety of navigation, control of depths, control over compliance with international rules and regulations of maritime and port work, control over the accrual of port dues to the state from incoming ships, and so on. And no theft at tenders, leasing state berths to outright hucksters and offshore traders, no earnings from deposits from state port fees, etc. The combination of control and commercial functions in this one administration is an invention “a la Sasha Yanukovych” that must be stopped immediately.
— In almost all of our coastal cities, the ports in the city centers are closed by high dirty fences from the residents of these cities. Traditionally, back in the 19th century, ports were located in city centers. Today, the best urban areas of our coastal cities need to be opened to citizens, creepy fences removed, territories opened up for real new jobs, in order to receive much larger taxes from these territories.
For example, the Odessa port justifies the fact that it does not have a land tax for the city by the fact that the territories it occupies are filled up and artificial. For the “Soviet” this is a good excuse, but for the new post-war Odessa it is insignificant and unacceptable. If you don’t want to pay a land tax, leave, and we will find other tenants of city land and make this tax in favor of the townspeople. It is necessary to open territories in Nikolaev, and in Kherson, and in Mariupol, etc.
It’s hard to even imagine how much less dust, dirt, noise, vibration, corruption and bribes will become in these cities in these areas closed from the public.
And for transport workers it will even be an interesting task to set up effective work in the remaining ports in this process of “port decolonization”.
