In January-April 2023, Ukraine increased the export of ferrous metal scrap by 5 times compared to the same period last year - up to 56.449 thousand tons from 12.470 thousand tons. This is stated in the statistics of the State Customs Service of Ukraine.
According to the customs, in monetary terms, the export of scrap metal over the specified period increased three times and amounted to 16.684 million dollars.
Ukrainian scrap metal export in January-April 2023, it was carried out to Poland (97.37%), the Netherlands (1.10%) and Slovakia (0.67%).
Earlier, the president of the Ukrmetallurgprom association of enterprises, Alexander Kalenkov, warned that scrap metal is exported through the European Union, where there is a preferential export duty of EUR3 per ton, and from there strategic raw materials are redirected to real customers in other countries.
Alexander Kalenkov called for a temporary ban on the export of ferrous scrap to provide for metallurgical enterprises a strategically important raw material in the context of the ongoing war.
“If scrap metal remains in the country, more than 500 thousand people will have jobs, and the country will have millions of foreign exchange earnings from steel exports. At the same time, the military will also benefit, because metallurgists help the fighters a lot, buying equipment and cars for them, and even releasing bulletproof vests. No one will benefit from the export of scrap metal. Therefore, now the authorities must act proactively and temporarily ban exports until the situation stabilizes and ceases to threaten national economic security,” Kalenkov believes.
He specified that a ton of scrap metal processed into steel contributes to the budget 10 times more than the export duty in the EU - about 300 dollars per ton.
