Subsequent to President Putin’s order to set up a “public” coal sea terminal which could serve any shipper in the Far East, a number of investors proposed their projects. However, there is such a terminal and it is already operational, quite successfully indeed.

Automobile boom in Russia seems to go down. Experts say there will be no amazing growth in this market. The companies specializing in foreign car logistics anticipate escalated competition and understand they can win only with the state-of-the-art IT solutions. River transportation is a promising sector and transportation of cars in containers is likely to become popular again.

There have been two announcements recently on the Far East port facilities expansion. The first announcement came from Primorsky region Governor’s press office about the decision to cancel the Slavyanka coal terminal project, and the second one was the launch of survey work in the framework of Sukhodol bay terminal project. Meanwhile, Primorsky Krai Duma legislators are set to oblige all stevedoring companies in Russia to utilize only indoor coal warehouses.

Russian customs authorities are preparing for the introduction of mandatory pre-arrival notification on maritime transport. The customs claim they are not responsible in any way for ship delays, while the business community point out the discrepancy of some orders FCS to new challenges.

National Shipping Chamber has initiated introduction of a federal programme on providing ship owners with ship utilization grants. Albert Vygovsky, Managing Director of North-Western Shipping Company OJSC, tells IAA PortNews about how this measure is to influence the Company’s decision on its fleet renovation.

The demand for LNG is going up worldwide. Gazprom and Rosneft, wishing not to loose this market, have announced their plans on construction of LNG terminals in the Baltic and the Far East regions. However, Russia may miss the opportunity of gaining a foothold in this market – when the projects are implemented the majority of volumes will be contracted.

Russia’s transit potential has been recently the subject of wide discussions as it is located between the two global trade centers – the European and the Asian ones. The creation of infrastructure for multimodal transport corridors is proposed to realize this potential.

Russian transport infrastructure is badly in need of expansion and modernization but budget funds are not sufficient to cover all the needs especially in view of possible deficit of the federal. In this context, high hopes a laid on private-public partnership though there are some “hidden rocks” here as well.

The projects on creation of special economic zones in the ports of Murmansk region and Khabarovsk territory have “stumbled” over the “frozen” Shtokman project in the first case and over insufficient capacity of Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) in the latter one. The stevedoring companies themselves feel no excitement over the PSEZ idea – the market participants believe special economic zones should be created not in ports but around them and they should be managed by the regions rather than by the federal center.

Port Vysotsky LLC has commenced implementation of an investment programme valued at $40 mln and aimed at doubling of coal turnover by 2015. The growth of transshipment volumes requires attraction of more personnel to the port. Partnership with Admiral Makarov University will facilitate it.