Negotiations between JSC Russian Railways and Chinese Railways have been concluded in Moscow.

The sides noted the high number of China-Russia-Europe rail container shipments and agreed to consolidate their work on introducing electronic data exchange technologies.

They also agreed in their assessments that the potential for container transportation is about 1 million containers per annum.

“Today, the exchange of paper documents is not just inefficient, it also damages the competitiveness of railway transport. It is necessary to replicate the practice of issuing the CIM/SMGS consignment note on different routes. And finally, we must arrive at the point where we can dispatch container trains ’by timetable,’” said Alexander Misharin, First Vice-President of Russian Railways.

“We have a freight base for transit, but in order to attract it to rail transport, it is necessary to regulate issues related to customs clearance,” said Huang Ming, Deputy Managing Director of Chinese Railways.

The two delegations also agreed to establish a joint working group on the issues of high-speed freight transportation. In particular, the issue of organising a demonstration run of freight transportation by baggage train from China to Russia will be worked out.

In addition, the talks touched upon various aspects of the design and construction of the Moscow-Kazan High Speed Railway. The sides noted the successful progress of the design and survey work and the readiness of the two companies to engage in further cooperation.

Following the negotiations, a protocol was signed on further joint action.
Railway transport volumes on the East-West International Transport Corridor in the last three years have increased from 43,900 Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) in 2014 to 150,600 TEUs in 2016.

At the same time, the volume of transportation on sea routes between Europe-Asia and Asia-Europe has hardly changed.

One of the trends in recent years has been a multiple increase in transit traffic from Europe to Asia.

(Source: RZD)