Russia’s trade with the EU dropped about 25% year-on-year during the two quarters from April through September, while the trade with China and Southeast Asia grew by almost 10%, and that in the South direction by 56%, RF Vice Premier Andrey Belousov said at the Transport Week 2022 Forum held this week in Moscow.
One of the key issues in this respect is developing the mainline transport and logistics corridors, he concluded.
‘Historically, the eastern corridor has the largest capacity. It is 11-12 thousand kilometers long and has a capacity of 280 mn tons. But this is not enough to provide for the current and short term development of the country. The plan is to expand the capacity of the corridor up to 350 mn tons of cargo per annum by 2030. The corridor to the Azov and Black sea basin with a link to Turkey and North African countries is about 3.5 thousand kilometers long and has a capacity of almost 180 mn tons. Here, there is a huge growth potential. We expect a growth of some 300 mn tons. This corridor will be comparable to the eastern corridor in terms of capacity. The North-South corridor is of exceptional importance. It goes from the port of Ust-Luga to the Iranian ports of Bender-Abbas and Chabahar with a link to the Indian Ocean and is 5,000 kilometers long. Its current capacity is 14 mn tons. We want to expand it up to 32 mn tons. It crosses a number of existing transit corridors in the North-South direction and potentially can change the global transport logistics,’ the Government press office quotes Belousov as saying.
The Vice Premier emphasized that building a transport and logistics corridor requires extensive systematic work. Each corridor should be seamless, which calls for a number of regulatory updates to be made in the framework of agreements with the neighbouring countries.
Photo: RF Government press offfice