Ukraine considers Romania and Moldova as the most promising directions for the transit of agricultural products and, hence, for the development of infrastructure, Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration Oleksandr Kubrakov, who is also the Minister for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development of Ukraine, has said at a conference "The Future of Ukrainian Exports" organized by the Ekonomichna Pravda publication in Kyiv on Wednesday.

The official said the Ukrainian government has been working on logistics projects with Moldova and Romania. These countries do not consider Ukraine as a competitor and see good commercial prospects for generating income from the transit of goods from Ukraine.

"Moldova and Romania felt that they could make money on transit, it is an additional income for them and we are not competitors," he said.

Kubrakov recalled that Romania is expecting funds from the European Commission for the modernization and development of its transport infrastructure. Although this logistics route is more expensive and marginal for Ukraine, such projects still make sense as Romania and Moldova show interest in cooperation.

The minister also said that Ukraine currently has many initiatives on the Danube River, plans to develop checkpoints and build the railroad infrastructure towards Moldova.

While commenting on the 2024 national budget expenditures on the Ministry for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development, Kubrakov said this will affect the pace of construction of the infrastructure necessary for exports. However, the government has solutions for this problem, he said. In particular, UNICEF and USAID have showed interest in the arrangement of checkpoints. The World Bank also promised to join in the infrastructure and housing construction projects scheduled for 2023. In addition, the construction and modernization of roads can be financed at the expense of the Road Fund and European Investment Bank.

"This will take a bit more time indeed. However, I think emotions should be removed because this [active construction of checkpoints] has been lasting for more than half a year. This [the infrastructure development] will continue. We will just lose some time," the minister said.

Kubrakov said the Polish direction also remains important for Ukrainian exports, however, the volume of railroad transportation halved as compared to the previous year. When the solidarity corridors were open, the transportation of cargo, including agricultural products, reached 1.2 million tonnes per month, then in March of this year it was 250,000 tonnes, and in the summer of this year it was revived and reached 500,000 tonnes, he said.

"There is no sense in additional development of the railway infrastructure [towards Poland] with such a level of loading," he said.