The first ship loaded with coal from South Africa passed through the Bosphorus Strait on October 22, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk has said.

"As many as 84,000 tonnes of coal from South Africa passed through the Bosphorus only today," he said at a government meeting on Wednesday.

Yatseniuk said that Ukraine needed about four million tonnes of coal by the end of the year.

As reported, Ukrainian Energy and Coal Industry Minister Yuriy Prodan said in September that Ukraine's state and private enterprises had signed agreements on the supply of 5.6 million tonnes of imported coal before the end of 2014.

"We have signed an agreement on coal supplies with South Africa - one million tonnes before the end of the year should be supplied. We, and other private enterprises, which today are working on the energy market (DTEK, Donbasenergo), signed agreements on the supply of coal from Russia. Unfortunately, this is a scarce grade of coal, which you can only find in Russia and certain countries. The total volume of coal supplies according to the agreements we have is 5.6 million tonnes before the end of the year. This coal will be enough for us to have more than 3.5 million tonnes of coal at thermal power plants on January 1, 2015," he said.

Later Ukrinterenergo said that the first vessel with coal from South Africa would dock in the Illichivsk sea commercial port (Odesa region) on October 16-20. Ukrinterenergo has contracted one million tonnes of coal of the anthracite group at Steel Mont Trading Ltd. and 250,000 tonnes of coal should arrive in Ukraine every month.