Minsk — port of four oceans

The development of port logistics includes Belarus in transnational transport corridors

Port Bronka In St.Petersburg    port-bronka.ru

The twenties of the 21st century in the space of greater Eurasia are the time of a new renaissance of the port theme. Russia’s special military operation, the subsequent sanctions against the Union State, the stalemate in the European economy and — from recent events — the failure of the grain deal — all this in a complex is fundamentally changing the state of affairs in the logistics sector. Cooperation along the East-West axis is giving way to new priorities, which, for example, promise Belarus not only new ways of export-import operations, but also certain geopolitical benefits.
In the context of sanctions pressure, the issue of port infrastructure and river / sea logistics should be considered in two ways. The topic of the economy in terms of restoring and reorienting export flows is, of course, number one here. But this task is momentary, although critically important. But the opportunities that the situation opens up for our country in the medium term require serious reflection.
The agreements concluded last year between Belarus and Russia in the field of the use of Russian port facilities by our enterprises created an unprecedented regulatory framework for the work of Belarusian exporters with third countries through the logistics points of a partner in the Union State.

Port Nakhodka   vostport.ru

The very existence of such documents actualises the work on filling the Eurasian North-South transport corridor, one of the priority logistics projects of the EAEU. A simple enumeration of the strongholds of this path (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Astrakhan, Iranian Anzeli, Indian Mumbai) does not seem to hint at the strategic Belarusian benefits. And yet, through Astrakhan and potential cooperation with the local port, Belarus gets an entry point into a geopolitical project, a strategic transport corridor, a route of domestic goods to the Eurasian Southeast that is virtually invulnerable to external sanctions. This could only look like a distant prospect, but at the 10th Forum of Regions in Ufa, the governor of the Astrakhan Region, Igor Babushkin, openly suggested that Belarusian partners create their own logistics centre in the special economic zone of the Astrakhan port.
“Our region is the centre of this strategically important trade route (North-South — editor’s note), along this corridor through our region all the main water and railway routes pass, connecting Russia with the countries of the Caspian Sea, and through the territory of Iran with the states of the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia. Our Astrakhan port complex allows us to handle over 16 million tons of cargo per year, and as the capacities of the port of the Special Economic Zone are put into operation, this potential will only grow,” Igor Babushkin said then.
In turn, the prospect of participating in this and similar projects for Belarus means not only and not so much new export routes. Here we are talking about the inclusion of domestic manufacturers and suppliers of goods in intercontinental multimodal seamless transportation schemes.
And this, in fact, is the formation of a new, not just a logistics industry. Rather, it is about creating a fundamentally different economic reality, in which the goods move from the manufacturer to the buyer by different, usually several, modes of transport, with electronic declaration and online tracking.
Ports in the Baltic, White and Black Seas, the Caspian Sea and the Pacific Ocean are ready to provide similar promising sites for the development of export flows, and indeed they do provide Belarusian producers. Having in the zone of relatively easy access, for example, such strategic ports as Astrakhan, Murmansk, St. Petersburg and Nakhodka, Belarus receives corridors to four oceans at once.
Of particular interest here is access to the routes of the Northern Sea Route, the development of which somewhat gave way to military reports in the media, but did not stop at all. And the significance of the route, justified long ago by Soviet economists, will only grow as the old Europe is torn away from the centre of world economic development.

  By Maksim Korotkin