Freight rail traffic to Russian seaports rises 8% - Vadim Morozov
Russian Railways (RZD) predicts an 8-percent gain year-over-year in export cargo deliveries by railroad to Russian sea ports by the year-end results, RZD press service reports.
The figures were announced by RZD Vice-President Vadim Morozov at a recent conference call focused on interaction of railroads and seaports.
Overall, RZD plans for the year to carry to the country’s sea ports 230 million tons of cargo. In the reporting period the largest traffic growth was reported for the North-West direction. The state-owned rail monopoly hauled to the region-based ports nearly 100 mln tons of cargo, a 14-percent growth year-on-year. The Far East ports received more than 76 million tons of freight, up 7% from a year earlier; 56 million tons (+2%) were delivered to the ports of the southern basin.
Since 2007 the national rail company has seen a twofold surge in export cargo shipments through its Eastern region network. This encouraged the RZD top management to focus on the region’s rail infrastructure development. In this regard, the most important event was a ribbon-cutting ceremony held on 25 December 2012 for the new Kuznetsovsky tunnel on the Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Sovetskaya Gavan line, which will significantly expand the capabilities of the Far Eastern ports.
"The exports traffic is growing amid overall slump in freight shipments by railroad, cased by macroeconomic processes in the economy. In these circumstances, the role of cooperation between rail and maritime transport significantly increases for cargo delivery," the RZD first Vice-President was quoted as saying.
However, cargo handling at seaport reaches only 70% of its capacity. There was a backlog of over 70,000 railcars in December only. As a result, currently, nearly 200 trains loaded with cargo stay idle on the rail network, Morozov said.
