IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim is scheduled to visit the port of Odesa on 29 August, to see at first-hand the implementation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative.
IMO Sec-Gen will also hear how ship safety and port management is being implemented. Mr. Lim is expected to board a ship and speak to seafarers.
During July, Russia and Ukraine signed a landmark deal to reopen Ukrainian Black Sea ports for grain exports, increasing hopes that an international food crisis aggravated by the Russian invasion can be eased.
Safe passage into and out of the ports would be guaranteed in what one official called a “de facto ceasefire” for the ships and facilities covered, they said, although the word “ceasefire” was not in the agreement text.
Monitored by a Joint Coordination Center based in Istanbul, the ships would then transit the Black Sea to Turkey’s Bosphorus strait and proceed to world markets.
The aim is to help avert famine among tens of millions of people in poorer nations by injecting more wheat, sunflower oil, fertilizer and other products into world markets including for humanitarian needs, partly at lower prices.
