Business news

MINSK, 23 December (BelTA) – Belarusian Railways will provide consulting services to the administration of the China-Belarus industrial park Great Stone and its residents for the sake of working out cargo transportation and logistics schemes. The relevant trilateral memorandum was signed by representatives of Belarusian Railways, the park administration, and the park development company on 22 December, the Belarusian Railways press service told BelTA.

According to the source, Belarusian Railways and its organizations will provide consulting support to the park administration and the resident companies for the sake of working out the transportation and logistics schemes for delivering the cargoes, which are needed to build the Park’s facilities. Belarusian Railways will also provide forwarding services, customs ones, information ones, and other kinds of services for the sake of organizing export and import as well as transit transportation of cargoes by rail.

The trilateral memorandum determines strategic avenues of cooperation in the sphere of transport and logistics. The sides have set out to preserve and increase the volume of transportation. They will endeavor to raise the competitiveness of transportation for the sake of enabling the most comfortable conditions for investment activities of the Park’s residents.

The topicality of the document is confirmed by the constantly expanding foreign economic ties between Belarus and China, including in the sphere of transportation and logistics. Among other things export, import and transit transportation will be organized as part of the Silk Road Economic Belt initiative.

Belarusian Railways pays considerable attention to the development of transportation by container trains between Europe and China. For the last few years the number of regular trains from China to Western Europe has been rising. At present eight container trains are used to enable transportation from and to Germany, Poland, Czechia, and Lithuania via Belarus. They cross the country within less than 12 hours, travelling at up to 1,400km per day, with minimal time spent idle at stations.

In January-November 2015 Belarusian Railways secured an increase in container transportation between Europe and China by 70% in comparison with the same period of 2014 to a total of 42,900 containers in 20-foot equivalent units.