Ukraine cannot get money to import coal during the heating season - expert
To complete the heating season, Ukraine needs to purchase 2,5 million tons. coal, but she simply doesn’t have the money for it, and it’s impossible to purchase and deliver such a volume now.
Economic expert Yuriy Gavrilechko stated this at a press conference in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The relevant minister says that we have no problems. Let's take a look: our need for the heating season is 2,5 million tons. 500 thousand tons should arrive here per month. To buy them, you need to allocate money in advance. Even if we take the average price of $150 per ton, a fairly simple calculation shows 500 thousand tons. multiplied by $150 - this money is not in the budget.
I don’t understand how much money they are going to buy this for.
If you collect money from the market in advance, it’s even more interesting. We need to collect about 2 billion UAH monthly. Due to what? That is, in total we lack 10 billion UAH.
If the minister knows where this money is, then it is advisable to inform him. Either we take out a loan and issue government bonds, which are placed by the Ministry of Finance. Or the NBU allocates money from the reserve reserves.
We also need to find a seller. No one will just sell it. Not because someone stopped or blocked it, it’s just that in order to sell coal, it still needs to be mined. Nowhere, in any country in the world, does coal lie in reserves so that Ukraine would come and say “sell us 500 thousand tons per month” and these 500 thousand tons should be transshipped per month. Who will contract the ships on which everything will be handled?
There are a lot of issues that should have been resolved back in the spring. And no one thought about them. Therefore, I don’t understand how the statements of the relevant minister that we will not have problems will be realized,” concluded Yuriy Gavrilechko.
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