OREANDA-NEWS. March 31, 2011. Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine will support initiatives of chiefs of sea trade ports, which will attract more cargo. This was stressed by Deputy Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine Konstyantyn Efimenko.

"I am ready to consider all options from chiefs of ports. Every idea that fosters real attraction of freight will be supported and implemented by the Ministry. We expect from port proposals and actions ", - Deputy Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine Konstyantyn Efimenko said.

At the same time Konstyantyn Efimenko said that any steps, including providing discounts have to be economically justified. "Just providing discounts on transportation by rail will not solve the issue: we will take profits from one state enterprise and provide it to another. Such can not be, - he said. - If the port can prove that the granting of any discounts really attract transit, such a discount can be provided. However, this does not have to suffer the interests of industry enterprises ", - Konstyantyn Efimenko said.

First Deputy Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine noted that today reduced the servicing time of containers in ports: for example, in Odessa port average servicing time of one container is 6.5 hours, lllichivsk - up to 12 hours.

Now ports are working on a program to increase rear areas and expansion of rail lines and freight platforms for unloading. This will allow increasing the daily limit of servicing of wagons, which in turn will improve the performance of ports and railway.