BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
15/08/2010
Belarus and Russia coordinate railway freight traffic with Poland
BelTA learnt from the Belarusian Railways press service that the Belarusian Railways and the Russian Railways have coordinated the freight traffic activity in the East-West-East direction including transshipment in Belarus with the participation of private licensed Polish carriers.
The press service said "The Russian Railways had had no mechanism and legal frameworks for such traffic before as all freight traffic towards Poland was conducted by the Belarusian Railways and the Polish state-run carrier PKP KARGO."
The EU transport service market has recently expanded and included many new railway carriers. The necessity rose to improve cooperation between them and the Belarusian Railways. The Belarusian Railways has agreements on cooperation in the international freight traffic for 2010 with several licensed Polish carriers PKP CARGO, CTL Logistics, DB Schenker Rail Polska, ITL POLSKA.
The specialists added that "In this regard, it is important that the Russian Railways, realizing the importance of liberalization and development of the market of railway transportation in the East-West-East direction, find a way out of the situation and coordinate the transportation of goods in this direction with participation of the private licensed Polish carriers."
This will enable the Belarusian Railways to intensify the work with carriers to increase the volume of transit cargo in the East-West-East direction. The downtime of cars on the Belarusian-Polish border will be eliminated. Delivery of goods to Poland will be three days faster on average. Senders and recipients of goods will be able to choose not only the carrier, but also the country where the goods will be transshipped. Thus, the range of services provided to the owners of goods in the CIS and Western Europe will be increased significantly.
Since the beginning of the year there has been a steady growth trend in transit of goods in the East-West-East direction through the Belarusian Polish border crossing points. According to preliminary information, in January to July 2010 the Belarusian Railways transported over 6.1 million tonnes of cargo in the East-West direction from the CIS countries to the European Union. The cargoes were mainly coal, timber, oil and ore. These and other goods may be transshipped on the Belarusian territory.
Source:
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