russia slows down vessels’ movement along the grain corridor. 100 vessels wait their turn in the Sea of Marmara now — the marine expert

On the average, 6–7 vessels loaded with grain leave the Odesa oblast ports per day. However, the problem is now in the Sea of Marmara, that is to say, in territorial waters of Türkiye, where the inspection is carried out by the Joint Coordination Center which examines each vessel. It was here where a huge congestion occurred – most of the vessels are those with Ukrainian grain. Now there are about 100 of them there.

Andrii Klymenko, Head of the Monitoring Group of the Institute for Black Sea Strategic Studies, Editor-in-Chief of BlackSeaNews, made this statement in the Media Center Ukraine – Ukrinform.

“This is the first time we have seen such a situation in 10–12 years. When a vessel waits for CC inspectors for several days. And a few days ago, there was even a collision between two vessels that were leaving the Odesa ports,” the expert explained.

Andrii Klymenko points out that since September 18, Ukrainian vessels have been waiting for an average of 200 hours to be inspected, with a maximum of 528 hours of demurrage. The expert explains that it is not known why exactly since mid-September the trend appeared to increase the waiting time. However, he suggests that it could be triggered by some statement of the top political leadership of russia regarding the grain corridor.

“Every day of idleness costs thousands of dollars, contractual deadlines are disrupted, people do not receive food, the entire logistics chain fails. This results in a loss of time and a loss of products export volume,” Andrii Klymenko said.

According to the expert, the Turkish maritime authorities also do not express their opinion on this issue.

“What do we have to do in this situation? To increase the number of groups to inspect the vessels. And we should also appeal to President Erdoğan, as a project initiator, and ask him to sort out the situation,” he explains.

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