Hola Prystan Mayor Oleksandr Babych, Head of Hola Prystan District Council Vitalii Soloviov, heads of the contracting organizations and NIBULON’s specialists were present at the meeting headed by NIBULON’s General Director Oleksiy Vadaturskyy and Head of Kherson Regional State Administration Andrii Hordieiev.
The weighing complex at once attracts attention during inspection of the construction site. This is the first building that has been built on a turnkey basis. Thus, the workers have already installed all the necessary warning signs there; the building itself is furnished with new furniture, blinds, pictures, and even flowers in pots. To make the work of employees more comfortable on hot days, an air conditioner has been installed.
The specialists are performing finishing works at an administrative and laboratory building, a canteen, a transformer substation, a workshop, a garage, and a fire station; the works must have been finished by May 20. The contractors promise that the canteen and part of the administrative and laboratory building will have been built by May 10; so soon the production meetings on the construction progress will be held here.
All the foundations of grain storages must have been laid by 100% by the end of the week, as the vessel with silos metalware come to Odessa soon; the metalware will be delivered to the construction site. So, we have to construct an access road from the administrative and laboratory building to all these foundations and mount the upper galleries.
From mid-May the company will start to repair the access roads to the transshipment terminal and to improve roadsides so that both residents of the town and drivers could feel comfortable.
During the production meeting Oleksiy Vadaturskyy stressed once again that NIBULON’s high-tech facility in Hola Prystan was being built due to active work of Andrii Hordieiev, the head of Kherson Regional State Administration, on attracting investments; he had personally invited the investor to the region and was supporting and assisting it,
“Andrii Anatoliiovych started it all, and I am very grateful. If the heads of all regional administrations were so persistent, in a good sense, and invited investors, we would be interested in investing, and builders would be interested in the construction of new facilities. We are also fortunate that Kostiantyn Bryl is the governor of Zaporizhzhia region. He also expressed an interest, and we are constructing our facility there”.
NIBULON’s Manager said that the Head of Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration Valentyn Reznichenko also supported the company. Next year the company will finish construction of two facilities in Marianske and Vasylivka-na-Dnipri; this will help to minimize cargo transportation by road transport. For example, 41 thousand tons of grain are delivered to NIBULON’s transshipment terminal in Mykolaiv from Zaporizhzhia region. Grain is also delivered to Odesa and Kherson. The leader of domestic agrarian market plans to transport by inland waterways not only agricultural commodity but also metal, ore, building materials, etc.
“We have already signed an agreement with Dnipropetrovsk specialists on transportation of metal and its export. We’ll transport ore to Zaporizhzhia by water. So there is some progress in this direction”, said Oleksiy Vadaturskyy.
Regarding passenger transportation Oleksiy Vadaturskyy explained that it was still a social project for NIBULON that didn’t provide for any profit. Otherwise many passengers couldn’t afford water trips along the river, as at present, because of illogical Ukrainian legislation and contrary to common sense, transportation of cargoes by water is more expensive than rail transportation, and passenger transportation using water transport is more expensive than transportation by bus. Water transport is competitive only if it’s necessary to get to remote places you can reach only by using several modes of transport.
NIBULON will start its pilot projects for the organization of passenger transportation by water in such areas. In general, Oleksiy Vadaturskyy says that in order to make river transport work in Ukraine, because the demand is huge, it´s necessary to cancel the excise tax on fuel for shipping companies, not to introduce the corrupt river dues, and to improve a package of draft laws No. 2475a “On inland water transport” and No. 2712; so that after approval by the Parliament the laws would not be beneficial to certain industrial and financial groups or corrupt officials but could work for the development of our country, for the benefit of every citizen of Ukraine.
The Head of Kherson Regional State Administration Andrii Hordieiev shared this opinion, “Introduction of the river dues will do nothing and, on the contrary, will increase the cost of water transportation and make them uncompetitive. At present river transportation is like a baby, and these are its first steps. It is unacceptable to put such obstacles in the way of development of this mode of transport”.
It should be noted that the World Bank strongly recommends not just to improve but to rewrite the draft laws “On inland water transport.” The representatives of other international institutions, who have accumulated and analyzed a huge amount of information about the way water transportation is organized in other countries where they have become a tool of development and economic growth of regions and states, share this opinion.
“One has always to fight for the good cause, for the truth. At present there is a fight for the free Dnipro River, for the competitive Dnipro River. I believe that this fight will be successful. As for the recommendations of the World Bank, I worked with the World Bank on the program for irrigation. They have a professional, conceptual, and above all, philosophical approach. There will be no corrupt schemes; they will not allow this. Therefore, if the World Bank has given its recommendations, we need to take them into consideration. This is an authoritative organization”, said the Head of the Kherson Regional State Administration.