白俄罗斯 中欧铁路线上的物流中心

On the position of the Republic of Belarus regarding the development of China-Europe container routes.
The China-Europe-China route, through which goods from Belt and Road countries flow to Europe, is  now the most dynamically developing and economically attractive for the transport business of the entire region.

Belarus considers this direction as one of its priorities. For further development of transportation together with foreign partners we are actively investing in the development of related infrastructure, for example, modern logistic centers are created throughout Belarus along railway and road routes, making freight transportation through Belarus attractive and efficient. The successful implementation of the national “Program for the Development of the Logistics System of Belarus” allowed to set up 29 modern logistics centers in the country.

In May 2017, at the “Belt and Road” Forum governments of Belarus and China signed “The agreement on the development of international freight traffic and cooperation in the implementation of the concept of building the Silk Road”. After that within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Belarusian Railways, together with the railways of Russia and Kazakhstan, have established the United Transport and Logistics Company on a parity basis, providing a set of logistics services in the “1520 area” for container train projects in the Asia-Europe-Asia communication, including China-Belarus-China route.

Transit potential of the Republic of Belarus.
Transportation optimization is provided by the active role of the Belarusian side in the seven-party Agreement between the railways of China, Belarus, Germany, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Poland and Russia on deepening cooperation on the organization of container trains in the China-Europe communication, as well as the work of the Belarusian railways in a bilateral format with the Polish and Russian railway administrations. For example, in the future, we are planning to implement “paperless” technologies in China-Europe container routes transit.

Already now it can be noted that Belarus is a leading country in the region in terms of speed of transit trains through its territory: the transit time of container trains on the Belarusian railway from Krasnoe station (state border with Russia) to Brest is less than 12 hours, the route speed of individual trains reaches 1,162 km /day. Moreover, Belarus is implementing a special program, which will increase the speed of the territory to 1180 km per day by 2020.

It also can be noted that since 2015 we have been monitoring a rapid growth of freight traffic activities by the Chinese container operators via Belarus. For example, in 2015 298 China-Europe trains passed via Belarus, in 2016 — 1,661 trains, in 2017 — 2,742 trains, and in 8 months of 2018 — already 2,373 trains.

At the same time, we register that the most active Chinese companies-operators, organizers of container trains are: “Chengdu International Railway Service co.,Ltd”, “Zhengzhou International Hub Development and Construction”, “Yuxinou Logistics”, “Wuhan Asia-Europe Logistics”.

The contribution of the Republic of Belarus to the development of China-Europe container routes.
The China-Belarus-China container route over the past years has been actively developed by the Belarusian state-owned enterprise “Belintertrans”. Since 2013 “Belintertrans” together with its enterprise Belintertrans Germany GmbH, has been organizing the transit of container trains from China to Europe (Chengdu – Lodz – Chengdu, Zhengzhou – Hamburg – Zhengzhou, Chongqing – Duisburg – Chongqing and others) providing freight forwarding  and delivery of goods throughout the entire route.

It is important to note that, we in cooperation with Chinese partners we undertook successful measures and reduced tariffs to the level of sea transportation, which makes this type of transport truly competitive and attractive. Currently, the average cost of shipping one container from Minsk to the central part of the PRC varies from $ 2,500 to $ 4,000.

In addition to the direct transit by the Belarusian Railways, “Belintertrans” considers the ways how to apply its terminal “Kolyadichi” as a distribution hub. In 2017, “Belintertrans” together with the China Brilliant Supply Chain Service, DHL Global Forwarding (China) Co., LTD, KTZ Express organized the arrival from Shenzhen to the terminal “Kolyadichi” of three container trains China Brilliant with their terminal processing and delivery of goods to customers both within Belarus and in the EU countries.

Therefore, we expect that the Republic of Belarus will become not only a transit, but also the most important logistics and distribution hub for China-Europe container routes.

The role of land container routes in the implementation of the “Belt and Road” initiative.
The land container routes created by China have already made a positive effect on the development of countries' trade along the Belt and Road.

From this point of view the sphere of supplies of the Belarusian foodstuffs to the PRC with the use of container routes looks very attractive and mutually beneficial. We already have delivered natural Belarusian milk of high-quality to China. Recently, we managed to get all the necessary permits and approvals for import of the Belarusian beef and poultry meat.

That is why, the Republic of Belarus was one of the first in the region who started to use railway container trains returning to China for the supply of natural food products with a short shelf life. From September 2018 on container trains loaded entirely by the Belarusian products are sent from Minsk to Chongqing on a monthly basis. At the same time we are actively negotiating with operators from other provinces of China, for example, Sichuan, Hubei and we hope to arrange regular supply to these provinces.

Thanks to the active use of the Belarus-China container routes in the first 8 months of 2018, we enjoyed the multiply of the Belarusian dairy products to the PRC supply by a factor of 9. The total trade turnover between Belarus and China is also growing, which in the first 8 months of 2018 amounted to $ 2.4 billion (growth rate 120%)