Ukraine will use all the income from a good harvest to purchase increasingly expensive coal - expert
The second half of the year will be more difficult for the Ukrainian economy than the first, and this will be affected, among other things, by rising prices for coal and gas against the backdrop of low reserves of these energy resources, which is why Ukraine is forced to purchase them on the eve of the heating season, during the period of maximum prices.
Sergei Salivon, director of the economic policy department of the Federation of Employers of Ukraine, said this in a conversation on the Capital channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Based on the results of the first two months (third quarter), a recession began; we have had two quarters in a row of a decline in the economy compared to the previous quarter. We entered a recession without really getting out of the previous one. And we managed to do this against the backdrop of record prices for iron ore, record prices for sunflower oil, and well-increased prices for corn.
That is, all our export goods rose in price very much in the first half of the year, and we stubbornly did not buy energy resources in the first half of the year, waiting for them to become cheaper. Now they have become “cheaper” – they have become twice as expensive. We are now buying them, and it is clear that in the second half of the year it will be even worse, even despite the super harvest - it is unlikely to be able to compensate for what now needs to be purchased for coal.
So, the Minister of Energy says that in order to get through the winter (it is necessary to purchase coal) for about 500 million dollars, but it seems to me that we need to buy about 750 million at the new prices so that thermal power plants do not shut down in the winter. We finally need to buy more gas.
It is already being purchased - in August we bought more than a billion cubic meters of gas, and its price was 440-450 dollars. It could have been done, say, in April at 240, but we buy at 440 in September. And we still need to buy another billion and, apparently, it will no longer be 440, but 500, and maybe more. All this also affects GDP,” said Sergei Salivon.
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