EUR 550 Million Worth of Goods Trapped for Serbian Companies – Full Danube Waterway Profile in Bulgaria in a Month and a Half

The Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure estimates that Serbian mechanization will need around a month and a half at most to secure the full profile of the navigable waterway in Bulgaria so that our products and imported goods, which are stuck due to the low water level of the Danube in the country, would be transported to their destination.

This pertains to 30,000 tons of oil and oil products, as well as 1.2 million tons of coal which are imported to Serbia. There’s also 750,000 tons of our wheat and corn from the old yield and 350,000 tons of wheat and corn from the new yield, meant for export from Serbia. Also, 300,000 tons of raw materials used in the chemical industry for the production of artificial fertilizers (phosphate, potassium chloride, ammonium sulfate and urea) and 100,000 tons of artificial fertilizer, meant for export, are stuck at Bulgarian ports.

The ministry says that, considering the great quantities of goods, there is no alternative to water transport.

Dragoljub Rajic of the Business Support Network believes that the state should include the biggest logistics companies, because it is only them that have people who can compare the costs and estimate which routes are the best for the shipment of energy and raw materials and the export of goods, which are trapped in Bulgaria due to the low water level of the Danube. In this situation, where there is no other possibility for the transportation of goods, it would be smart, he says, to rely on the experience of those who work with the whole world and who are well familiar with the current situation in the logistics market.

According to him, the problem is that a substantial part of the goods cannot be loaded onto trucks. In addition to that, road transport would considerably increase the costs. In terms of quantities, only railway can replace the mass transport of agricultural products by river boats, because an average barge carries a quantity equivalent to 19 to 40 trucks. However, our railway, Rajic notes, cannot take over that amount of goods in a short time.

– It is not enough just to include the railway, but also leading logistics companies, in order to repackage the goods and deliver them in a different way. This entails a whole range of not just physical, but also administrative procedures. The problem is that we have no alternative roads for the transport of goods and that there are no options B or C. No one thought whether the Danube would at some point not be a good way to transport goods. It is very likely that the goods would not reach their destination for weeks and that is a problem for the state and for a good part of the private sector, which, at this moment, according to our estimate, has goods worth around EUR 550 million that are trapped. Energy, which the state imports, should be added to that – Rajic says.

He emphasizes that it is difficult to estimate the damage. As time passes, it increases, because the barges that transport coal or construction materials, as well as those which transport containers with combined goods, have been stuck somewhere at the Danube ports.

Ministarstvo građevinarstva, saobraćaja i infrastrukture Republike Srbije

BSN-Mreža za poslovnu podršku Beograd

Ministry of Construction

Business Support Network

navigable waterway

goods in Bulgaria

Danube

Danube water level

low Danube water level

goods transport

stuck boats