A. Armonaitė: "Lithuania is ready to assist Poland in solving the grain crisis"
Minister of the Economy and Innovation Aušrinė Armonaitė met with Polish Minister of Economic Development and Technology Waldemar Buda in Warsaw to discuss how Lithuania could assist Poland in solving the grain crisis.
"The Port of Klaipėda and Lithuanian Railways could play an important role in creating an impulse to help Poland to resolve the current situation and to guarantee grain exports outside the European Union. Lithuania can help ship up to 1 million tonnes of grain safely by rail from Ukraine. This would be a real solution for Ukraine and a help for Poland", said Minister for the Economy and Innovation, A. Armonaitė.
Last Saturday, Poland temporarily suspended imports of cereals and other food from Ukraine to protect the interests of local farmers. The import prohibition will remain in force until 30 June. Slovakia and Hungary took similar decisions.
Ukrainian cereals have been transported through the EU to third countries since Russia, which launched a military invasion of Ukraine, blocked the traditional export routes for Ukrainian cereals via the Black Sea. However, some of the grain remained on the domestic market and was not exported to third countries.
A.Armonaitė, who is in Warsaw with the Lithuanian business delegation, opened the CEBioForum 2023 life sciences forum, took part in a discussion on the future of life sciences in Europe, and visited Lithuania's stand together with representatives of the Lithuanian biotechnology association Lithuania BIO and the Innovation Agency.
The Minister also met with Janusz Cieszyński, Polish State Secretary for Digitalisation and Government Plenipotentiary for Cyber Security, and visited the Lukasiewicz Research Centre. This is the third largest research network in Europe, bringing together 22 research institutes and 440 laboratories in 12 different cities. In total, the network employs around 7 000 people (4 200 are engineers or scientists).