On September 18, Vladimir Salamatov, General Director of ITI, appeared in the Economy thematic program on RZD TV (corporate TV channel of Russian Railways). In the interview, Vladimir Salamatov told the audience about the growing potential of transit railroad container traffic via the territory of Russia.
Of the total freight traffic from Asia to Europe, 77% comes from China, 13% from Japan, and around 9% from Korea. To stimulate railroad transportation while simultaneously developing the economy of its western regions, China has introduced so called tariff subsidies, not only for goods coming from China to Europe but also the other way because for a long time there was very little return traffic from Europe to China.
"In 2017-2018, we saw a huge leap forward in this area. While in 2017, the container load in the return traffic from Europe to China was around 53 percent, by 2018 the load already reached 72 percent. Clearly, this is due to the efforts of our transportation companies to stimulate return traffic. Also, the quality of goods consumed by the middle class in China is rising," Vladimir Salamatov said.
The double-digit percentage growth in the freight traffic is the result of the huge work done by transportation companies to promote transit railroad container traffic via Russia among suppliers, both in China and in Europe.
"Alongside the political comfort that exists, we must make use of economic instruments, and we must understand that if China starts to cut the subsidies or cancels them, we'll have to find new sources of growth to retain the current volumes of traffic," Vladimir Salamatov pointed out.
New sources of growth, such as strengthening cross-border relations or switching to electronic workflow of customs documents, are actively discussed at the international level now.
Source: RZD TV
