DISCUSSIONS AT THE BOSPORUS
For two days at that Istanbul hotel discussions
were held on projected ports in St. Petersburg and
Leningrad Region.
The Third International Conference on “Ports, Sea
and River Cargo Transportation in the CIS and
Baltic States” saw the participation of leading
scholars, high-ranking government officials,
bankers, heads of large German, Israeli, British,
Finnish and other companies. For the two days of
the conference the participants worked twelve to
fourteen hours a day. The following fact became
clear: port development strategy in St. Petersburg
and Leningrad Region is based to a large extent on
one of our advantages, namely that freight from our
ports can go by waterways straight to the interior of
Russia and then further to the South and East. A
government decree is soon expected to open up
these inner waterways to ships flying foreign flags.
We take such prospects quite seriously. When the
volume of cargo traffic is high, the 9th Transport
Corridor 9 is ideal. Clearly, it is necessary to
accelerate not only Russian projects but also
general plans for all the countries of the Baltic
region. There is no time to waste, for there are
other plans as well. One of them is the program,
often referred to as “the 21st century’s silk way”,
presented by the administrator of the TRANCECA
project (Hamburg port training centre). This route is
expected to link the West to the East, from Europe
across the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the
Caspian Sea to Central Asia. It may replace the
traditional thoroughfares (which are not efficient
enough) and bypass Russia. To avoid that
possibility, energetic measures should be taken by
all the countries connected with the 9th Corridor.
Certain serious steps have already been taken in
that direction. Last autumn the heads of delegations
from the cities of Lubek, Rostok, Orkhus, Riga,
Kleipeda, Gdansk, Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg,
Kotka, Marienhamna, Helsinki, Turku, Kalmar,
Stockholm, Tallinn, Berlin, Warsaw, Bordeaux and
Paris, signed a Mutual Agreement on their readiness
to contribute to the integration of the Baltic states
into the New Europe of the XXI century and on
strengthening links between cities in the Baltic
states. The Eurasia Club was founded and a
decision to establish an Eurasian bank was
adopted.
Other practical steps worth mention are:
FINNCARRIERS OY has joined the
TRANSRUSSIAEXPRESS conference, founded
by POSEIDON SCHIFFAHRT AG of Germany
together with Russia’s Baltic Transport Systems.
Finland’s JSC THOMESTO-ENGINEERING,
together with the US’s COOPER AND SMITH,
has been bidding for the construction and further
operation of a refrigerator terminal with a capacity
of 1 million tons in the St. Petersburg Seaport. The
port of Paris has been researching the possibility of
opening a container line between Moscow and
Paris for Ladoga-100 boats (they are the only ones
capable of travelling the Seine).
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Professor Usanov,
advisor to the Chair of the St. Petersburg’s Committee on Economic and Industrial Policy
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“For us, this conference is as important as a
thermometer is for the sick,” said Professor
Usanov, advisor to the Chair of the St. Petersburg’s
Committee on Economic and Industrial Policy. “It
shows our true condition.”
Professor Usanov chaired one of the plenary
meetings at the conference, presented a report at
one of them, and had a lot of contact with the
participants. Discussions on every subject were
very straightforward. No one pulled any punches.
The issue that topped the agenda was naturally high
taxes.
We cannot but share our partners’ concern about
all the complications of Russia’s customs
procedures, considerable port dues, and high tariffs
on reloading. Who can make sense of the 350
decrees, often controversial, regulating
transportation in Russia, which occasionally
mutually exclude and contradict each other? We
often suffer from them ourselves.
“We have been working to diminish that pressure,”
noted Professor Usanov.
The participants of the conference were informed
not only about future plans but also about what was
being done to improve the situation, including the
following: The Teleport united satellite
telecommunications centre was set up; the structure
of regional transportation logistics centres was
outlined; Baltic Transport Systems together with
Baltic Customs introduced the electronic processing
of documents, which will result in a truck’s leaving
the ferry just 19 minutes after arriving at the
mooring wall; the Committee on Economic and
Industrial Policy signed an agreement with the
Oktyabrskaya Railroad, the Transcom-Inter
northwestern trans-portation company and
Fige-Logistics of Germany on creating a logistics
centre for multimodule transportation. In terms of
practical work, one may now rely on the
considerable experience and professional skills of a
large number of agents, forwarders, stevedores and
freight carriers. It was suggested however that their
licensing should be improved.
The Istanbul conference was informed that Mintrans
and the State Customs Committee had, at a joint
meeting, outlined measures to simplify customs
clearing procedures. St. Petersburg's Port
Administration will be subordinated to the dual
authority of Mintrans and the municipal government,
which will have the authority to set the port’s dues.
Everyone at the conference understood that no
arrangements bear immediate fruit. Things take
time. They clearly realised however that if there a
chain of consistent interconnected actions were in
place then a moment would eventually come when
quantity becomes quality.
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