In seven years, Ukraine has lost 85% of its fleet
“Ukraine is in dire need of updating both the civil and military fleets, but the country’s shipbuilding industry is in a deplorable state.
Viktor Plakhuta, project manager of the strategy and development department of the State Corporation Ukroboronprom, announced this during the presentation of the development strategy for the shipbuilding industry of Ukraine, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The average service life of civil fleet vessels is 30-40 years. In the field of science and development of shipbuilding, over 30 years, 15 out of 33 research institutes and design bureaus have remained. Production is very dependent on imported components - 70% of the orders of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine are made abroad. The workforce is aging and the vocational education system has been destroyed. Ukrainian ports are used at approximately 50%.
Today in Ukraine there are 20 shipbuilding and ship repair shipyards, 15 design and scientific organizations. The shipbuilding industry employs approximately 6000 workers. In 2020, 18 ships were built, including 4 for export. In 2020, 305 ships were repaired, of which 138 were for foreign customers.
As for the state of the infrastructure, on which the state and development of the shipbuilding industry depends, there are 16 river ports and terminals in Ukraine, the theoretical throughput capacity of the river infrastructure is 60 million tons per year. The length of internal river shipping routes is 1,6 thousand km. Ukraine also has 18 seaports, their throughput capacity is approximately 300 million tons per year.
“The key problem of the industry is the very low domestic demand for domestic products,” noted Victor Plakhuta. The fleet is outdated, there are too few new ships.
In Ukraine today there are 1438 ships, their average age is 32 years. At the same time, 20% of them are not suitable for use, up to 80% are obsolete vessels with an average age of more than 37 years, 40% are cargo ships (in particular, non-self-propelled vessels make up 30%), 60% of the fleet are inland watercraft, 20% are tugs , 20% – special purpose vessels.
At the same time, over the past seven years there has been a dramatic reduction in the merchant marine fleet - by 85%.
“Ukroboronprom” together with the Association of Shipbuilders of Ukraine (ASU) “Ukrsudprom” has developed a new project called “Strategy for the development of the shipbuilding industry of Ukraine.” According to the dreamers' calculations, Ukraine needs to build 240 new ships.
According to the developed “strategy”, potentially the volume of freight traffic on inland waterways of Ukraine until 2030 can be increased to 30 million tons per year, which could create 7500 new jobs and annually bring an additional 16470 million UAH to the budget.
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