05 февраля 2024 — 14:00
Belarus intends to increase the transshipment of Belarusian goods through the ports of St. Petersburg to 15 million tons by 2025, Interfax reports, referring to the statement of Minsk's ambassador to Moscow Dmitry Krutoy.
"The investment plans of the Russian Railways and the Belarusian Railway have been agreed. The first stage is the restoration of the sidings, which were actually mothballed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They need to be restored very quickly and quickly today. And the basic task is to ensure by 2025 the volume of transshipment of 15 million tons of Belarusian goods using the ports of St. Petersburg," the Belarusian diplomat said on Sunday on the air of the state television channel Belarus 1.
"With the existing infrastructure, primarily the railway, we have actually already reached the ceiling of this transshipment. Although the numbers are large, they have increased significantly compared to 2021-2022. Last year, this amounted to 14.1 million tons of cargo through all Russian ports, of which the lion's share - 12.9 million - through the ports of St. Petersburg," Krutoy noted.
"The task has been set to use the advantages of Murmansk, the Northern Sea Route, in order to deliver our goods to China. First of all, the shortening of the time and the safety of this logistics route are obvious today. Russians themselves are now actively starting to use it. Chinese logistics companies, for their part, are also starting to develop it very actively," he added.
"We have such plans. I think in the first half of the year we will finally decide on the Murmansk options," the ambassador said.