Shipment of coal from South Africa to Ukraine has been stopped due to blocking of sale of currency to Ukrinterenergo to pay to the supplier - Britain's Steel Mont Trading Ltd., the Ukrainian state company has told Interfax-Ukraine.
“The ship with the fourth batch of coal is off the harbor of the Illichivsk port, but it is impossible to unload it… Our company was blocked from buying foreign currency and we cannot pay to Steel Mont for the third and fourth batches. They cannot pay to the port for unloading and to railways for wagons,” Ukrinterenergo said.
The Ukrainian company said that the hryvnia to buy foreign currency was reserved over three weeks ago, although the company has failed to carry out the transaction.
“Unfortunately, we don’t know who blocked the process,” the company said.
Ukrinterenergo said that 80 percent of the cost of the third batch of coal from South Africa was to be paid by Nov. 17 (20 percent was an advance payment), although the company did not pay the sum.
Ukrinterenergo said that Illichivsk port, TIS terminal and Ukrzaliznytsia did a great work to ensure the rhythmic unloading of coal, although their efforts were in vain.
“All shipment was stopped, and railways have to redistribute wagons and the port cannot keep berth vacant. Coal which arrived with the best moisture is getting wet due to snow. It will take time to organize the unloading… The situation is horrible,” the company said.
The company added that as a part of a criminal case law-enforcers seized all servers of the company and call managers of the company for interrogations.
“As it is known, now Russia stopped shipment of anthracite coal to Ukraine. It’s likely that someone inside our country is interested that coal from South Africa was not supplied, and Ukrinterenergo did not diversify supplies and the situation in the energy sector worsened,” the company said.
