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tons.​ Last year, Dnipro cargo was up 22%, to 10 million tons. By Nov. 1, President Zelenskiy wants to pass an inland shipping bill that will restore the Dnipro to its past role as the Mississippi of Ukraine. In the late Soviet era, the river carried 65 million tons a year.
● Cars
Ukraine’s exports to the EU may drop in October if Poland does not quickly issue more permits for Ukrainian trucks, ​logistics experts say. Poland, Ukraine’s second largest EU trading partner after Germany, is the main port of entry for Ukrainian goods sent by truck to the EU. This year, in a bid to bolster Polish trucking, Poland cut its permits to Ukrainian truckers by 28%, to 160,000. But Polish trucking companies are short of drivers and do not want to come to Ukraine. In Warsaw last weekend, President Zelensky and aides asked for immediate talks. “We do not want to wait for the moment when we use all permits -- all this must be done in advance," Oleksandr Danylyuk, Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, tells Ukrinform.
9.1.6​ Agriculture sector news
By launching a farmland market one year from now, agricultural productivity will increase by 6% a year, ​according to estimates by the new Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture. Over five years, farm land rents will more than double, rising from UAH1,700 per hectare today to UAH4,000 in 2024.
Reflecting strong demand for Ukrainian farmland, bidders paid $435,277 for land leases on October 1​, almost four times the initial asking amounts, reports Ukrinform. For SETAM, the government electronic auction platform, it was a record amount of bidding for one day. Designed to start setting market prices for land, open auctions started one year ago.
The World Bank says $500mn will be needed to help 2,200 small and medium farmers buy the land they currently lease​. Satu Kahkonen, the Bank’s regional director, says the government should set up a Partial Credit Guarantee Agency to help farmers make the transition from leaseholders to landowners. As used in countries like Colombia and Mexico, the Fund guarantees up to 50% of a loan, often up to seven years. Under discussion in Kyiv for over a year, the concept has the support of the Finance Ministry and the National Bank of Ukraine.
More than 1,000 foreign-controlled farming companies already cultivate about 5% of Ukraine’s farmland​, Economy Minister Milovanov said on Shuster’s ICTV program. “The experience of Eastern Europe shows that foreigners do not really come in so quickly and they come in at a very small percentage. We do not expect that there will be an impact,” he said, addressing age-old fears that foreigners will grab Ukraine’s black earth. "They do not understand us,” he said of foreign agricultural investors. “They do not trust us yet. They can go to other countries where there is already infrastructure, roads, courts, etc.”
The launch of a farm land market will boost Ukraine’s GDP growth by 1-2 percentage points in 2021​, and by 3-3.5 percentage points each year through the mid-2020s, Economy Minister Milovanov predicts on Savik Shuster’s Freedom of Speech program. The Zelenskiy government plans to start the land market after next year’s harvest, on Oct. 1, 2020.
61​ UKRAINE Country Report​ October 2019 ​ ​www.intellinews.com