The Belgorod-Dniester seaport to be put up for privatization

The State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPFU) announced that it will put up for auction the property complex of SE «Bilhorod-Dniester Sea Trade Port». «Ports of Ukraine» informs about it with the reference to Oleksandr Slavskyi, the head of the regional branch of the SPFU in Odesa and Mykolaiv regions.

According to Oleksandr Slavskyi, this will be the second port asset after the Ust-Dunaisk seaport that they will try to privatize. The auction is planned to be announced by the end of winter 2023.

As the official noted, whether other similar objects will be put up for auction will depend on the results of the privatization of the Ust-Dunai and Belgorod-Dniester ports, which are being monitored by the SPFU and the Ministry of Infrastructure.

On January 17, 2023, the State Property Fund spent the first tender in Ukraine for the privatization of port assets. In the course of bidding in the Prozorro.Sale system, the price of the single property complex of the SE «Ust-Dunaisk Sea Trade Port» increased more than three times – from the initial 60 million UAH to 201 million UAH. Eight participants competed for the right to privatize the port.

Ust-Dunaisk port resumed operations on April 1, 2022. Since then, the volume of export cargo handling has reached 153 thousand tons of grain and 58.3 thousand tons of imported consumer goods for the port’s design capacity of 4.1 million tons.

In January-September 2022, the state stevedore «MTP “Ust-Dunaisk» received UAH 848,000 in net profit. In January-November, the port paid more than UAH 9 million in taxes.

As GMK Center reported earlier, the cargo turnover of Ukrainian seaports will decrease by three times in 2022 due to the large-scale invasion of the Russian Federation compared to 2021 – to 50.8 million tons. Such expectations were voiced at the end of December by Oleksiy Vostrikov, acting head of SE «Administration of Sea Ports of Ukraine» (ASPU). At the same time, the expected transshipment of the Danube ports will triple in 2022.