Valeriy Tkachov, deputy director of the commercial department at Ukrainian Railways, said on Facebook that over the last week the number of grain wagons heading to Odesa ports increased by more than 26% to 5,341 from 4,227. He said up to 970 wagons were unloaded at the ports' silos every day. Later, a senior agricultural official said the route - which runs along Ukraine's southwest Black Sea coast, into Romanian territorial waters and onwards to Turkey - would also be used for grain shipments. The UCAB agricultural business association said this month that Ukrainian grain agricultural exports rose by 15% to 4.8 million metric tons in October thanks to the new corridor. Ukraine's government expects a grain and oilseeds harvest of 79 million tons in 2023, with a 2023/24 exportable surplus of about 50 million tons.

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Persons: Valeriy Tkachov, Oleksandr Kubrakov, Pavel Polityuk, Raju Gopalakrishnan Organizations: Ukrainian Railways, Facebook, Thomson Locations: Ukraine's Odesa, Ukraine, Russia, Black, Turkey