23 April 2002 00:00
ON STATE OF, AND PROSPECTS FOR RUSSIAN EUROPE-ASIA TRANSPORT CORRIDORS
The Energy, Transport and Communications Committee of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of Russia has held parliamentary hearings on the state of, and prospects for the Russian Europe-Asia transport corridors, in which Deputy Committee Chairman Yuri Lipatov and Deputy Valery Galchenko took part.
Three centers of economic activity have currently formed in the world - Europe, East Asia and North America. Russia's geopolitical position between two dynamically evolving world centers of business activity - Europe and Asia - predetermines its special role in ensuring Eurasian links. Trade volumes between Europe and Asia reach 600 billion US dollars a year. The total yearly volume of container freight traffic between Western Europe and East Asia now exceeds 6 million containers in the twenty-foot equivalent with the integrated cost of the commodity stock at 250 billion US dollars. Of this volume the Russian transport services account for 10 to 15%.
Russia, with more than 30% of the territory of the Eurasian continent and in possession of a highly developed transport system, is objectively a natural bridge ensuring transit links in this sector. So far the transit potential of Russia is being poorly used. This calls for the purposeful activity of the state in coordinating the actions of federal and regional bodies of power with a view to creating favorable conditions for the attraction of transit passenger and goods flows to Russia's transport services.
The priority areas of East-West transport links were determined in 1994, at the Second Pan-European Transport Conference. They found reflection in the creation of nine pan-European transport corridors, three of which (No. 1, No. 2 and No. 9) run through the territory of Russia. The Third Pan-European Transport Conference in Helsinki (1997) took decisions to extend the existing Corridor No. 2 to Nizhni Novgorod and to provide for expanding Eurasian transport links.
Taking all this into account, the participants in the parliamentary hearings recommend that the Government should consider the possibility of establishing a single operator for container traffic in the Trans-Siberian Sector and the possibility of accelerating the construction of the Olya commercial seaport and a railway extension for its connection to the network of the Russian Ministry of Railways.
They also recommend that the State Duma amend the Laws on the State Regulation of Foreign Trade Activity, on Customs Tariffs, on the Licensing of Certain Kinds of Activity, on the Natural Monopolies, on Investment Activity in the Russian Federation, Carried On in the Form of Capital Investment, On the Protection of the Natural Environment, and on Road Traffic Safety, and the Customs and Tax Codes. And that in the annual adoption of the Budget it should consider the possibility of increasing the budget financing for the sub-program International Transport Corridors.
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© Publication of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.
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