UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and his teams are actively working to extend the deal on grain exports from Ukraine, which has helped lower world food prices, his spokesman said on Friday.
“The Secretary General's teams are engaged in intense contacts on these issues.
Mr. Guterres and his team are working hard to extend and expand the Black Sea Grains Initiative
,” said Stéphane Dujarric.
“They are also actively working to remove the remaining obstacles to Russian grain and fertilizer exports
,” he added.
Two agreements were signed on July 22 under the aegis of the UN: the first, dubbed the
“Black Sea Initiative in favor of cereals”,
allows for 120 days the export of Ukrainian cereals blocked by the war;
the second aims to facilitate the export of Russian food and fertilizers, despite the sanctions imposed by Western countries on Russia.
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But Russia complains of not being able to sell, despite this agreement, its production and its fertilizers because of these sanctions affecting in particular the financial and logistics sectors.
"The Secretary General spends a lot of time on the phone to unblock things in various bureaucracies that are stopping the facilitation of this trade in Russian fertilizers and cereals
," assured Stéphane Dujarric.
Lower food prices
He also indicated that Rebeca Grynspan, secretary general of the UN trade and development organization Unctad, which took part in the negotiations of the agreements, and the head of the UN humanitarian agency Martin Griffiths should go to Moscow
"in about a week to meet with senior Russian officials"
on these issues.
World food prices continued to fall in September for the sixth consecutive month, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced on Friday.
But the FAO cereal price index rose slightly by 1.5% compared to August.
International wheat prices rebounded 2.2% on concerns about drought in the United States and Argentina, and uncertainty over the extension of the Black Sea Initiative beyond the month of November.
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