MINSK, 29 June (BelTA) – More and more freight containers cross Belarus in transit thanks to Belarusian Railways, BelTA has learned.
On 30 June Belarusian Railways will welcome this year's 4,000th transit container train, which will travel from China to Europe via a Belarusian-Polish border checkpoint. The annual number of container trains that travel via Belarusian Railways reached 4,000 on 3 September 2020.
Over 700 container trains travel across Belarus every month. The average number of container trains that travel between China and Europe via Belarus every day stands at 24.
As many as 90-100 container trains leave China for Europe via Belarus every week. In 2021 the volume of container traffic in terms of twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) is expected to rise by 1.6 times in comparison with 2020. Container traffic from China to Europe is expected to rise by 1.5 times while container traffic from Europe to China will rise by 1.9 times.
Belarusian Railways is busy developing infrastructure to handle the growing container traffic. Apart from that, the border checkpoint Bruzgi – Kuznica Bialostocka has some capacity to spare – 41.5%. The spare capacity of the border checkpoint Svisloch – Siemianowka is estimated at 45%.
Belarusian Railways and Polish State Railways finished all the organizational and technical work to open the railway border checkpoint Vysoko-Litovsk / Czeremcha in H1 2019. However, the Polish side has yet to decide on opening this border checkpoint and resuming freight traffic.
The matter of building a new railway bridge across the Zapadny Bug River in order to increase train traffic via the border checkpoint Brest-Terespol still remains open.
