Avramenko: Belarus has diversified cargo deliveries through Russian ports

To date, Belarus has already used 19 ports of the Russian Federation for transshipment of its export cargoes – as Transport and Communications Minister Aleksei Avramenko told journalists after the meeting with the President

“Last year, we signed two basic agreements with Russia on the transshipment of Belarusian oil products, large cargoes, primarily potash and nitrogen fertilisers, metallurgy goods, and woodworking products. The volumes for 2023 have been determined and the ports that will be involved have been identified. Today, the main task is to increase these volumes and look at the quality and price of the final transshipment. There are currently no problems from the point of view of organising the process of transportation through the Russian territory,” Aleksei Avramenko noted.

Meanwhile, it is known that, e.g., the ports of St. Petersburg are almost twice as far as Klaipeda. Journalists asked how the problem of additional costs is being settled.

“If we are talking about an agreement on oil products, we levelled this difference by the fact that the Russian Railways provided a 50 percent discount,” the Minister replied. “For the rest of the foreign trade cargoes, we are working to get a discount on railway tariffs and be competitive with the ports that we used to have.”

Speaking about Belarus’ desire to build its own port facilities, Aleksei Avramenko explained that Belarus finances such construction using its own and credit resources, “There are a range of Russian banks that are ready to provide loans. The question is to get the final efficiency from the implementation of this project, because in any case this is a fairly large-scale project for the country.”

photos: www.belta.by

Aleksei Avramenko also said that as a result of the sanctions policy of the West, the Belarusian Railway is also forced to restructure approaches in its activities, “The main task is to update the rolling stock, since in fact 5,000 carriages were left in Ukraine. Of course, the transportation of foreign trade goods and domestic transportation are the tasks that we will solve as a matter of priority.”

Belarus is increasing cargo transportation to China. Last year, 988 container trains were sent there, over a million tonnes of potash fertilisers and other cargoes were transported, showing a steady and almost multiple growth. Moreover, the traffic that moves through Belarus in container trains from Western Europe to China, is also rising.