During the meeting, the representatives of the diplomatic mission familiarized themselves with the company’s shipbuilding program and main production facilities of the shipbuilding and repair yard. They saw the construction process of the longest vessel (140-m) in the shipyard’s history and discussed the current state of shipbuilding industry in Ukraine, as well as possible ways of its revival.
While visiting the transshipment terminal and familiarizing themselves with the work of NIBULON’s cargo and passenger fleet, the specialists of the embassy and the company paid considerable attention to the issues of inland water transport development and legislative initiatives in this area.
During a constructive dialogue, Oleksiy Vadaturskyy, as a manager of the company that is a flagship of Ukrainian shipbuilding successfully developing river navigation, noted the initiatives that should be introduced, adopted and implemented by lawmakers and ministries in order to develop inland water transport in Ukraine:
– to cancel excise tax on fuel or compensate part of the fuel cost in the amount of the excise tax to shipowners, which in turn complies with the international practice and will make bunkering behind the 12-mile zone inappropriate;
– to abolish the payment for locking through the Dnipro Cascade and for raise of movable bridges;
– to exempt shipowners from rental payment for water use;
– to introduce compensation from the State Budget of Ukraine to the first owner of a vessel of the part of the initial value of the vessel built in Ukraine and (or) part of the percentage of the bank interest rate on bank loans, loans from international financial organizations for the construction of a vessel in Ukraine to stimulate the development of inland water transport;
– to cancel customs duties on importation of goods and equipment for shipbuilding, ship repair, operation and modernization of vessels into the customs territory of Ukraine in order to stimulate the development of inland water transport and shipbuilding industry.
Having considerable experience in this area, Oleksiy Vadaturskyy believes that unless river fleet in Ukraine is competitive, vessels will not be constructed in Ukraine. The above-mentioned measures will increase the competitiveness of river transport relative to rail transport. In turn, this will allow the country to save billions of hryvnias of the state budget on road repairs, to remove load from the roads as much of the cargoes will be redirected to rivers, as well as to improve the ecology of settlements.
In the opinion of the company’s head and leading Ukrainian specialists in this field, the best practices of the leading countries, in particular the USA, EU countries, etc., can be implemented in Ukraine. We are able to turn the Dnipro River into Ukrainian Mississippi. Therefore, our company not only adopts this experience in the field of river navigation development, but also actively shares its own experience since NIBULON has been successfully implementing its investment project to revive navigation on the Dnipro and the Southern Buh Rivers for almost ten years.
For their part, the representatives of the Embassy of the USA expressed their deep gratitude to Oleksiy Vadaturskyy and NIBULON’s team for the opportunity to see a true innovative approach in NIBULON’s work, as well as for organizing their visit to Mykolaiv.
We would remind you that in July 2014, the diplomats from the U.S. Embassy Economic Department Daniel Nibarger and Larry Pixa visited NIBULON’s facilities. And in May 2018, Shelby Kinsley, a specialist of the United States Department of Agriculture, paid a working visit to NIBULON’s facilities.