Ukraine Russia Conflict: Ukraine plans to boost export capacity by 50% in upcoming months

Ukraine hopes to grow export capacity by 50 percent in the next few months, the deputy infrastructure minister said on Friday. More than ten seaports carried 7 percent of Ukraine's foreign trade, but they were closed after the Russian invasion. 

"Western borders and Danube ports today are the only way to export and import. We have already quadrupled the volume of trade through the Danube ports," the minister said. He said, "3.5 million tonnes of cargo was transported across the western borders by rail alone last month and the national railway operators are developing border terminals for general and liquid cargoes, as well as for reloading from wide to narrow gauge and vice versa."

"All this should lead to the fact that the capacity of the western border should increase by 50 percent in the next few months," he said.

"But even taking this into account, this (larger capacity) will not be enough even to serve at least half of the volumes that were transported through seaports in peacetime," he added.