The transport infrastructure of the Far East is at risk of being unable to cope with the increase of cargo traffic to the Asia-Pacific region
We see there being a risk of there being a situation similar to what happened last year, when there was not enough capacity, and ships were anchored for several days waiting to be unloaded. But what’s more, we see there being a risk of collapse, given the trend for shifting logistics from central and western regions. That’s because we do not have unlimited port capacity. Even today, two of the five container sites are at 102–103% capacity. In literally another 2–3 weeks we will very much be at a critical point — Vladimir Ivin, Deputy Head, Federal Customs Service of the Russian Federation.
After fairly low [figures – ed.] for July, we saw a surge of imports in August. The reason for this was clear – Chinese ports reopened after the lockdown. On top of this, there is already a certain amount of accumulated demand. We think that September and October will be fairly challenging months in terms of handling these volumes. That said, we know what needs to be done to cope with it. <...> True, they are mainly geared towards coal. Virtually 78% of all terminals are designed to handle coal exclusively. We don’t have enough – the capacity is not there in the East, and we need it to ship fertilizer, for example, and grain. And overall, we can see that capacity may even have to be increased when it comes to wider categories of goods and high value-added products — Aleksey Shilo, Deputy Managing Director, Head, Centre for Corporate Transport Services (CFTO), Russian Railways.
We have not yet started operations, but we are already encountering problems related to delivering materials to our site. <...> As things stand, there is an overall capacity shortfall of more than 70 million tonnes. And according to the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East and Arctic, it will grow severalfold — Yerkozha Akylbek, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Udokan Copper.
There are issues surrounding infrastructure, but this is a matter of planning. I am confident that these issues will not only be resolved for the medium term, but for the long term as well. The Russian leadership is paying a great deal of attention today to the development of infrastructure, and particularly transport infrastructure — Le Truong Son, President, Vietnam Businessmen's
Association.
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