Uralchecm, a Russian producer of mineral and potash fertilizer will supply its products to Africa for free. Dmitry Konyaev, the chief executive of Uralchem, confirmed the company’s plans on Monday.
Konyaev cited severe shortage of food for free delivery of its fertilizers. “The situation in the world today is really bad. Africa has been starving and will continue to starve, unfortunately. We, as a company, even decided to supply fertilizers to Africa for free, just because we are part of this global chain when you need to produce food,” Konyaev said during his speech at the Innofood forum in Sochi.
Taking the humanitarian action, the company would send the first batch of 25,000 tons of a cargo to the Republic of Togo. The CEO also pointed out that Russia faces no food security as the fertilizer rich country is self-sufficient and so can export in big bulks.
Earlier in September, President Vladimir Putin has declared the country’s stance at a summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. He said that the country is ready to transfer 300,000 tons of Russian fertilizers accumulated in EU ports due to Western sanctions to developing countries free of charge. While Putin gladly accepted the decision to allow Russian fertilizers into the EU, he condemned Brussels’s decision for only allowing the bloc’s member states to buy them.
At UN-mediated discussions in Istanbul at the end of July, Moscow and Kiev agreed to unblock Ukrainian grain exports across the Black Sea. The agreement was also meant to enable Russia to export food and fertilizer to international markets, but according to the Kremlin, this has not happened.
